Worktop replacement in East Village

Yes. East Village is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E20. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. The old tops have to go somewhere as well. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Piece size is set by the lift car and the entrance dogleg, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one. The room itself is the easy part: walls are plumb, corners are square and the floor is flat, so scribes are minimal and joins can be tight. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were.

Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Access out counts as much as access in.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration. Book the service lift, loading bay and concierge access for the full day, and confirm the building's permitted working hours in writing. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Whoever lives there hears the timing first.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The room is square, the walls are plumb and the floor is flat, so almost every complication in the job belongs to the building rather than the kitchen. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old cut-outs rarely match where the new appliances go.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops it. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight.