Worktop replacement in Erith

Yes. Erith is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA8. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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 measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Entry-phone access, a booked lift and a parking bay near the entrance all have to be arranged before a date is confirmed. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass 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.

Car depth is the number that settles it wherever a piece cannot be stood upright, and most residential cars are shallower than the run they are serving. 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 dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. 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 fabrication. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. 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. 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. Nothing to reseal is the point in a let.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The sink is chosen before the cut list is set.

A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. The shape is already there to be measured, which makes the template straightforward and leaves the strip-out as the part that actually needs planning. Joins move onto the gables this time round.