Worktop replacement in Hanworth

Yes. Hanworth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW13. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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 old tops have to go somewhere as well. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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. 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 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Between tenancies is the only window there is.

The advantage of a U is that every join can be put over a gable in a corner, so nothing lands in the middle of a clear length. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Same shape, different cut list. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Strip-out and fit inside one access window.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. The short run at the head of a U usually sits under a window, so that piece is scribed on three sides at once and has nowhere left to be pushed back to. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The old cut-outs prove nothing.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. It sets what the day actually looks like.

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. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A U puts the sink in one leg, the hob in another and any drainer grooves in whatever is left, which spreads the cut-outs about but does not reduce the machining time. The shape is already there to be measured, which makes the template straightforward and leaves the strip-out as the part that actually needs planning. Any overhang gets underpinned first.