Worktop replacement in Hyde Park Estate

Yes. Hyde Park Estate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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 have to go somewhere as well. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original panelling and shutter boxes stand out from the structural wall, so the face the units meet is joinery rather than plaster. 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. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. 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. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. Access out counts as much as access in.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. 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. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Level the units first, measure the shape second.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. The old tops leave by the same route, so the carry out and the skip or van are planned alongside the carry in. The way out is measured with the way in.