Worktop replacement in Kensington

Yes. Kensington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W8. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of the borough. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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 van has to stand through both halves of the day. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. 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. The fabric gets checked while it is open. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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.

A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Nothing else in the room has to change. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Yield is worked out fresh for the new material. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement. 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. 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. Two visits mean two people taking a day off.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. 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. A cast iron soil stack runs down the outside of the rear wall, so moving the sink means a fresh penetration through solid brick. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old top comes off in pieces, not whole.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. A run that flexed under laminate gets support now.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The laminate has been covering it up.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. The shape is already there to be measured, which makes the template straightforward and leaves the strip-out as the part that actually needs planning. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness.