Worktop replacement in Kensal Rise

Yes. Kensal Rise 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. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

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. 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. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up.

Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. 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 old top leaves by the route the new one arrives on. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Booked at short notice, because the notice is short. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Nothing else in the room has to change.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Yield is worked out fresh for the new material. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Found at template, not on fit day. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Two visits mean two people taking a day off.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. 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. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Two loads, one space, one day.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one.

It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. 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. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in.