Worktop replacement in Honor Oak Park

Yes. Honor Oak Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE23, SE4. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. What is under the old top is the real question. Split-level rear rooms are the recurring issue, confirm which floor level the units actually sit on before templating.

Steep gradients away from the station, on-street permit parking, and front gardens given over to bins rather than drives; the uphill roads are hard work for a two-man carry. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The strip-out is planned around it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. 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 carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. Sort a parking bay or permit near the entrance, confirm the lift is in service and get us the door codes, and tell us about any asbestos survey on the flat before we start stripping out. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed.