Worktop replacement in Kensal Green

Yes. Kensal Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW10. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. What is under the old top is the real question. In the new flats the units are often carcass-and-door systems with thin tops and no rails, so check the cabinet tops can carry 20mm stone before pricing.

Harrow Road and the gasworks-side roads are busy through the day with restricted stopping, and the residential side streets are permit-only. New blocks have proper loading bays but require a booking slot and a goods lift key. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Units kept, surface changed.