Worktop replacement in Mottingham

Yes. Mottingham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. 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. 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. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The window cill clears a worktop by very little, which settles how tall the upstand under it can be before anyone has drawn a thing. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. Units kept, surface changed, one day. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one.

Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. 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. Both movements are planned as one. 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. The van has to stand through both halves of the day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Same day, because the void is the whole budget. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Repairable in place beats replaced whole.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It was there long before we were. Sort a parking bay or permit near the entrance, confirm the lift is in service and get us the door codes, and tell us about any asbestos survey on the flat before we start stripping out. 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 gap between tenancies is the whole window.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Height change is checked before we cut.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The old top hid it. The drawing will not.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. 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. The old top leaves by the route the new one arrives on.

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. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. The old tops leave by the same route, so the carry out and the skip or van are planned alongside the carry in. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections.