Worktop replacement in Lea Bridge

Yes. Lea Bridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A radiator sits under the rear window on the outside wall, and moving it is plumbing that belongs before the template rather than after it. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon. 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. 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.

The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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 laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The annexe top goes in on the same day.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate has been covering it up. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. Residents are given written notice before anyone attends, and that notice period rather than the workshop is what governs the earliest sensible start. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Replacement suits occupied stock better than a strip-out.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Where the side return has been filled in, one side of the new room is old brick and the other is new blockwork, and the two do not behave alike. 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 is heavy waste, and booked as waste.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The boiler has usually been moved into the kitchen at some point, with its flue through the outer leaf and its pipework surface run to the nearest corner. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The tiles above will want attention once the old top goes.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top.