Worktop replacement in Mill Hill East

Yes. Mill Hill East is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW7. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. The van has to stand through both halves of the day. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Piece size is set by the lift car and the entrance dogleg, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one. The room itself is the easy part: walls are plumb, corners are square and the floor is flat, so scribes are minimal and joins can be tight. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. 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 the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. 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 one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Booked at short notice, because the notice is short. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Nothing else in the room has to change.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. Book the service lift, loading bay and concierge access for the full day, and confirm the building's permitted working hours in writing. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Notice goes out before the crew is booked.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. No money changes hands before the template. The lift car, the loading bay and the building manager decide the piece sizes here, not the slab. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old top is heavy waste, and booked as waste.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Developer carcasses are thin cam-lock chipboard, which is entirely adequate under laminate and wants bracing before stone. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The tiles above will want attention once the old top goes.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. 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. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Height change is checked before we cut.