Worktop replacement in Little Ilford

Yes. Little Ilford is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E12. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The kitchen sits at the rear with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the useful run is broken into two short lengths. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning. 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. The laminate has been covering it up.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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. It decides whether the old top leaves whole. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. The van has to stand through both halves of the day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A void week is the entire schedule.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Any overhang gets underpinned first. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting 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. 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. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Whoever lives there hears the timing first.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Both movements are planned as one.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. 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. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. A surface swap is the fastest upgrade available on a kitchen that is otherwise sound. A plumber either side of us.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. The recess is measured again once the old top is out, since the original fit was often cut to whatever it found. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not.