Worktop replacement in Hillingdon

Yes. Hillingdon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB10. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of the borough. 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. 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. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Houses at the later end of this period went up in cavity rather than solid brick, so two that look identical from the road behave differently when a fixing goes in. 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. The building has kept moving; the new template catches up. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

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. 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. That is agreed before a plumber is booked. 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. A timed bay does not cover a strip-out and a fit.

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. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Same day, because the void is the whole budget.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. 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. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. There is a chimney breast on each flank wall, and the one in the kitchen carried a boiler flue rather than a fireplace, so the recess beside it is shallow. 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.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. 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. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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.