Worktop replacement in Hornsey

Yes. Hornsey is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N8. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Winders at the head of each flight are the tightest part of the climb and they are appreciably tighter than the straight run below them. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up.

The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. 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 route is protected once and then used four times. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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 old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Booked at short notice, because the notice is short. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Nothing else in the room has to change.

A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Found at template, not on fit day. Have a plumber booked to disconnect the sink, tap and waste first thing and reconnect after we have gone, and clear the hallway and stairs completely so we can carry slabs through the house. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Repeat flats take the same replacement specification.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old top comes off in pieces, not whole.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing changes hands until after the template. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. Old top out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon, with a plumber either side of us. Laminate hides a level that stone will not.

Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.