Worktop replacement in Hendon

Yes. Hendon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW4. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen was a service room at the back of the flat, so it is a long way from the front door along a corridor with two turns in it. A mansion block is a logistics job before it is a stone job. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.

There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. 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. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop installation comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in. Get the managing agent's or freeholder's approval and the permitted hours confirmed beforehand, and agree with the porter who protects the communal carpet, stonework and lift. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A leaseholder still needs the building to consent.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The island top is the one that may want its own slab.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Floors are solid concrete under a screed, so nothing is packed by driving a fixing in and everything is packed by shimming. 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 thicker top changes what clears the top drawer.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Both movements are planned as one.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use.