Worktop replacement in Goresbrook

Yes. Goresbrook is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM9. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. 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. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Kitchens are compact and laid out to a standard plan, so runs are short and joins are usually avoidable altogether. Post-war terraces have small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run, so runs are short and joins are rare, but there are usually two corners and a window cill to work around in a couple of metres. Sound carcasses are the one condition. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. 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 installation. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them. A specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Between tenancies is the only window there is.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A run that flexed under laminate gets support now. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. Empty the base units completely and have a plumber disconnect the sink, tap and any washing machine plumbed in under the worktop before we arrive. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units stay, so the flat is usable that evening.

Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. A stub wall divides the kitchen from the back lobby, and it rarely stayed where the original drawing put it. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Same carcasses, straighter lines.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness.