Worktop replacement in Hoxton

Yes. Hoxton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. The old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The external wall is a concrete panel with a modest window, so the run under it sits in a shallow reveal with a hard cill. 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. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.

Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use. 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. 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.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The island top is the one that may want its own slab. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. 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.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. There is nearly always a boxed soil stack or a service riser in a corner of the run, and it is rarely mentioned at enquiry. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Nothing new goes down until the run reads level end to end.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. 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. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. 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. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.