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. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Above-shop flats mean carrying stone past a live business, so boards down and a planned route matter more than the fit itself.

The shopping street is busy from morning to evening with loading bans and enforcement cameras, so realistically it is an early start or a bank holiday. Access to the flats is through a shared side door between shopfronts, up a single narrow flight with a 90-degree turn, so nothing over about 2.2m gets up in one piece. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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 strip-out is planned around it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. Households sharing a house tend to want two prep areas rather than one, which usually means an island as well as a perimeter run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. 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.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Height change is checked before we cut. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Sound carcasses are the condition.