Worktop replacement in Golborne

Yes. Golborne is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W10. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. 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 stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The rear extension is frequently original rather than added, which means it is solidly built and just as far out of square as the rest of the house. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The alcove was never square and it still is not.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. 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. The van has to stand through both halves of the day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Housings set out for laminate are checked first. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A builder-finish kitchen upgrades in a morning.

The step or level change between the original room and the return is real, and the units need packing before stone goes across 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 strip-out is the part worth planning. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone. Have a plumber booked to disconnect the sink, tap and waste first thing and reconnect after we have gone, and clear the hallway and stairs completely so we can carry slabs through the house. 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. The plumber is booked by whoever holds the contract.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The practical answer is to check the fixture list before the date is offered, because a template slot lost to a road closure cannot be recovered that week. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Wider halls make the carry noticeably easier, and that alone can remove a join that a narrower terrace would have forced into the run. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. The old top hid it; the new one will not.