Worktop replacement in Hounslow West

Yes. Hounslow West is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are TW4, TW3. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. 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 fabric gets checked while it is open. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. 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 carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Specified for wear rather than for the photograph.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. The recess is measured again once the old top is out, since the original fit was often cut to whatever it found. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.