Worktop replacement in Fortune Green

Yes. Fortune Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW6, NW2. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Block and beam floors with blockwork walls are true enough that the scribes are light and the joins can be pulled tight. The work is all in the building, not the kitchen. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. 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. Disconnection happens before the old top is lifted, not during. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop installation. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Housings set out for laminate are checked first.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. Book the service lift, loading bay and concierge access for the full day, and confirm the building's permitted working hours in writing. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Programme work takes the flats in sequence.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Same footprint, different tolerances.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Infill plots usually put the kitchen at the back with wide doors to a small garden, and that opening is the best route in. Housings set out for a 38mm laminate change clearance when you drop to 20mm or 30mm stone, and that is checked before cutting. The fabric gets checked while it is open.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first.