Worktop replacement in Elephant and Castle

Yes. Elephant and Castle is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1, SE17. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen door is a fire door onto a lobby that is also the escape route, so nothing can be stood in that lobby while the work goes on. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A deposit deduction rarely covers a new top. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in. Sort a parking bay or permit near the entrance, confirm the lift is in service and get us the door codes, and tell us about any asbestos survey on the flat before we start stripping out. A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Somebody has to own the skip.

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. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. A suspension for the full day beats half a day lost.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. 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. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. These kitchens give three metres of usable wall and no more, so a dimension out by a few millimetres costs a whole run rather than a piece. 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 units are relevelled before anything new is bedded.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Dense concrete and blockwork mean the wall cannot be chased back or packed out, so the stone carries the scribe. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.