Worktop replacement in Liverpool Street

Yes. Liverpool Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2M. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. A mansion block is a logistics job before it is a stone job. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. 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. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections. 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. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. 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 carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A void week is the entire schedule.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Level the units first, measure the shape second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. Get the managing agent's or freeholder's approval and the permitted hours confirmed beforehand, and agree with the porter who protects the communal carpet, stonework and lift. 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. 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. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No payment is due before the template. Permitted working hours, a porter and a booked lift set a hard finish time on the day whatever stage the fit has reached. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The old top is heavy waste, and booked as waste.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the 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. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Same footprint, different tolerances.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The kitchen was a service room at the back of the flat, so it is a long way from the front door along a corridor with two turns in it. A full stone piece is several times the weight of the laminate coming out, and there is rarely room to turn it on a half-landing. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.