Worktop replacement in Lower Clapton

Yes. Lower Clapton 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. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. 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. Two loads, one space, one day. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day.

The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. 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 suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. 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. 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. 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. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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. Sequenced around access rather than around the workshop.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. 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.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. What is under the old top is the real question.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. 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. A surface swap is the fastest upgrade available on a kitchen that is otherwise sound. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. 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.