Worktop replacement in Kenley

Yes. Kenley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR8. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. 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. A timed bay does not cover a strip-out and a fit. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Everything on one level means no stairs, no landings and no turns, which is about the easiest carry there is in domestic work. 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 shell is the constant here; the surface is not. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem.

A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop installation. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. 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. Specified for wear rather than for the photograph. 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. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The old cut-outs prove nothing. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Nothing changes hands until after the template. The plaster is a thick float and set over brick that has blown in patches, so a wall sounds solid in one place and hollow a hand-span away. 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.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The laminate has been covering it up.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The kitchen door opens inwards into the middle of a run, so the usable length of that wall stops well short of the corner. Old top out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon, with a plumber either side of us. The old top is heavy waste, and booked as waste.

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. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in.