Worktop replacement in Hornchurch

Yes. Hornchurch is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM11, RM12. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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 stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The consumer unit and the meter tails often sit in a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen, and that cupboard has to stay reachable whatever goes in around it. 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. Sound carcasses are the one condition. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. The van has to stand through both halves of the day.

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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use. 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. Specified for wear rather than for the photograph.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Same shape, different cut list. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not. 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. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A tired carcass is said before, not discovered after.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Suspended floors at the front meet a solid slab in the extension somewhere in the middle, and the units sit across the change. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. A radiator sits under the rear window on the outside wall, and moving it is plumbing that belongs before the template rather than after it. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. 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. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The alcove was never square and it still is not.

Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. 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. It usually explains the odd filler piece or strip of beading in the existing run that nobody could account for. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.