Worktop replacement in Hook

Yes. Hook is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT9. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Windows and doors were replaced across whole streets on one programme, so the kitchen window is a plastic frame in the old opening with a deep lined reveal. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.

A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. 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. Out and in happen along the same protected route. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. 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. A timed bay does not cover a strip-out and a fit.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. One plot replaced years on, matched or otherwise. 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. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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 laminate has been covering it up. 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. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The plumber is booked by whoever holds the contract.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. 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. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Found at template, not on fit day.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The window cill clears a worktop by very little, which settles how tall the upstand under it can be before anyone has drawn a thing. Plaster bonded straight onto concrete comes away with the bottom course of tiles, leaving a band behind the upstand. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. 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.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery.