Worktop replacement in Frognal

Yes. Frognal is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW3. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Balcony access and long communal corridors are often the carry route, and both are narrower than they look with a piece on edge. A mansion block is a logistics job before it is a stone job. What is under the old top is the real question. Full-height splashbacks and island returns mean batch-matching matters more here than access does, so reserve slabs from one block and lay them out before cutting.

Wide but steep roads with in-and-out drives, so vehicle access to the door is usually good and the constraint is the long gravel drive and the steps up to the entrance rather than the parking. A few houses have gated entrances too narrow for a long-wheelbase van. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project.

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. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. Get the managing agent's or freeholder's approval and the permitted hours confirmed beforehand, and agree with the porter who protects the communal carpet, stonework and lift. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Sound carcasses are the condition.