Worktop replacement in Marylebone

Yes. Marylebone is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W1U, W1G, W1H. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. A mansion block is a logistics job before it is a stone job. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances.

A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. 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 room is cleared for the way out as much as the way in. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. A timed bay does not cover a strip-out and a fit.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Same day, because the void is the whole budget.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now. 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. The person choosing the surface is not the person who will cook on it, which argues for a finish that absorbs ordinary wear rather than one that rewards careful housekeeping. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Somebody has to own the skip.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The island top is the one that may want its own slab.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.