Worktop replacement in Green Street

Yes. Green Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E7, E13. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

These flats have been reconfigured more than once, so the kitchen often sits in what was a bedroom with services run a long way to reach it. 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. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.

Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. 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. The way out is measured with the way in. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. A suspension for the full day beats half a day lost.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. An annexe kitchen is often built to keep a parent independent, so worktop height and reach matter as much as the material does. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. One plot replaced years on, matched or otherwise. A family adding a self-contained unit is paying for the whole conversion, and the worktop is one line in a much longer job. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Same footprint, different tolerances. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The front rooms sit over the shop window with a structural beam beneath them, and the floor either side of that beam is not at one level. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear.