Worktop replacement in Harlington

Yes. Harlington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB3. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

A range or an Aga in an original recess is usually immovable, so the run is designed around it and the clearances come from the appliance. These are the multi-piece jobs: long runs, a large island and often a range cooker that cannot be moved, so the stone is templated in several pieces and how the vein runs across the joins matters. Same units, straighter line, better surface. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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 level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. The strip-out is planned around it. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop installation. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Where several adults share the cooking the kitchen is in use most of the day, so a fitting slot has to be agreed with more people than usual. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Specified for wear rather than for the photograph. 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. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. Have a fitter or joiner fix and level the island units beforehand, and get the sink, taps, hob and any range on site before templating so we cut to the actual appliances. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Strip-out and fit inside one access window.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Deep skirtings, a dado and a picture rail survive in the original rooms, so nothing sits flat to the wall without being cut around 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. A sound carcass takes stone; a soft one gets replaced first.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The room has three or four doors and a route through it to the garden, so the work shares the space with everyone else in the house. Old top out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon, with a plumber either side of us. The wall behind the old top is rarely the wall on the drawing.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Ceiling beams cross the room at a height that decides where a piece can be stood on edge and where it cannot. An overhang past about three hundred millimetres needs steel or brackets let into the units, and that is agreed before the old top comes off. The wall behind the old top has not been seen in years.