Worktop replacement in Haggerston

Yes. Haggerston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E2, E8. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A top-floor conversion puts part of the kitchen under the slope of the roof, so the wall behind the run stops at head height along one side of the room. 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. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances.

A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. 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. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top. 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. 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. Two loads, one space, one day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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 is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now. 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. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Nothing to reseal is the point in a let.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No payment is due before the template. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Same carcasses, straighter lines.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. Old top out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon, with a plumber either side of us. Twenty years of settlement is measured, not argued with.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. 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. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The old tops have to go somewhere as well.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. The flat below hears the floor more than the walls, so lifting boards to move a waste run is a conversation with a neighbour before it is a morning of work. 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 shell is the constant here; the surface is not.