Worktop replacement in Hayes End

Yes. Hayes End is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. 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. 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. Access out counts as much as access in. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The drains run down the side alley to a gully and an inspection cover near the back door, and the sink waste has always gone out on that side of the house. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Units kept, surface changed, one day. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem.

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. It sets what the day actually looks like. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Between tenancies is the only window there is. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. One plot replaced years on, matched or otherwise.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Joins move onto the gables this time round. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Somebody has to own the skip.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The laminate has been covering it up.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. 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. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. A timed bay does not cover a strip-out and a fit.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. 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. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.