Kitchen worktops in Ealing Broadway

Yes. Purpose-built mansion-block flats where the kitchen is still the original service room, giving a single 2.5m to 3m run with no scope to move anything, alongside new tower apartments with a peninsula and integrated appliances. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job.

Edwardian mansion block, Victorian villa conversion, 1930s purpose-built flat and 2020s town-centre tower. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. This is the most managed day we do. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

Town-centre controlled parking, a red route along the Uxbridge Road, and mansion blocks with narrow lifts or no lift at all. The new towers need a booked service lift and a timed loading bay. A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. It decides whether the old top leaves whole.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week. Mansion-block leases usually forbid moving services, so the top is designed around where the waste and the gas already sit, not around where the client wants the sink.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Replacement suits occupied stock better than a strip-out. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.

Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. Both movements are planned as one.