Worktop replacement in Golden Lane

Yes. Golden Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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 waste run is planned, not improvised. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These are built in dense concrete, so support for a peninsula or an end panel goes in with proper anchors rather than plugs. 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 tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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.

Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. One flat out of use at a time.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A run that flexed under laminate gets support now. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. 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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. The plumber is booked by whoever holds the contract.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Two loads, one space, one day.

Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. 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.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Where the kitchen is on the entrance level, the piece comes off the deck and turns straight in without going up or down at all. 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. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.