Worktop replacement in Lee

Yes. Lee is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE12. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Original quarry tiles survive under a later vinyl in many of these, and lifting the units off them shows how far the floor has fallen towards the garden end. 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 old top hid it; the new one will not. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not.

Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. 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. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Two loads, one space, one day.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The annexe top goes in on the same day.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A run that flexed under laminate gets support now. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The alcove was never square and it still is not. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The surface changes and the kitchen stays the one they know.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Laminate hides a level that stone will not.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. 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. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. The old tops have to go somewhere as well.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in.

The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. A surface swap is the fastest upgrade available on a kitchen that is otherwise sound. Booked at short notice, because the notice is short.