Worktop replacement in Millbank

Yes. Millbank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW1P. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A balcony door is the only other opening in the flat and it leads nowhere useful, so everything comes in through the front door. The work is all in the building, not the kitchen. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The alcove was never square and it still is not.

Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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 frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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 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. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Specified for wear rather than for the photograph.

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. 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. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone. Book the service lift, loading bay and concierge access for the full day, and confirm the building's permitted working hours in writing. 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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Owners phase this work; a void period cannot.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb.

Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. The kitchen is usually part of the living space, so three edges are read from a sofa rather than from standing height at the sink. 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.