Worktop replacement in Knight's Hill

Yes. Knight's Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE27. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Rear rooms of this date have a wide sash or a pair of garden doors, so a good deal of the wall the run wants is glass. 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. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.

Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. 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 front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Chosen against the doors that are staying. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A run that flexed under laminate gets support now. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate has been covering it up. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Wear is what the next inventory records.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No money changes hands before the template. Ceilings are generous and the rooms are narrow, so the runs are long, the aisle is tight and there is nowhere to stand a slab on edge. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Laminate hides a level that stone will not.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. 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.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.