Worktop replacement in Hampton Hill

Yes. Hampton Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW12. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Richmond upon Thames. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. The old tops have to go somewhere as well. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

The structure below is commercial, so the floor is often timber over a shop ceiling and the load path under an island is worth thinking about. The units are often 1970s or 80s and only around 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors and drawer fronts need checking against it. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances.

Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. 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. It decides whether the old top leaves whole. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Access out counts as much as access in.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The annexe top goes in on the same day.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now. 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 replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Notice goes out before the crew is booked.

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. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Working hours are constrained by the business underneath, so noisy work has a window rather than a day. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. Nothing goes back on carcasses the building has pulled out of square.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Plaster over blockwork is thin and hollow in patches, so anything fixed back to the wall needs a sound spot found first. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old top comes off in pieces, not whole.