Worktop replacement in Ladbroke Grove

Yes. Ladbroke Grove is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W10, W11. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The flat below hears the floor more than the walls, so lifting boards to move a waste run is a conversation with a neighbour before it is a morning of work. 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. Nothing goes back on carcasses the building has pulled out of square. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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.

A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. 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. The old top leaves by the route the new one arrives on. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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 skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Nothing else in the room has to change. 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 carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

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. 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. 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. Wear is what the next inventory records.

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. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. 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. 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.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Chimney breasts and the alcoves either side of them break the run into short pieces before anyone has drawn a kitchen. 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.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Any overhang gets underpinned first.