Worktop replacement in Longbridge

Yes. Longbridge is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. A shared-use bay allows a paid stay up to a set maximum, and that maximum is routinely shorter than the working day the job needs. 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. Two loads, one space, one day. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Ceilings are high in these, so wall unit heights and splashback heights are open choices rather than things the room has already decided. 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. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.

Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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. The way out is measured with the way in. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. 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 old tops have to go somewhere as well.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A void week is the entire schedule. 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 carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over 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. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. A bay-fronted terrace has a long hall running past the stairs to the kitchen, so the hall turn caps the piece length before the run length does. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.