Worktop replacement in Myatt's Fields

Yes. Myatt's Fields is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE5, SW9. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead 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. The old tops have to go somewhere as well. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The gas enters at the back of the house and the pipe to the hob crosses the room at low level in a boxing along the skirting. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. What is under the old top is the real question. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It was there long before we were.

Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. 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. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. Access out counts as much as access in.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Same day, because the void is the whole budget. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Repairable in place beats replaced whole.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The island top is the one that may want its own slab. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old top hid it. The drawing will not. 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. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A leaseholder still needs the building to consent.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The kitchen was laid out to a nineteen-sixties module, so the units in it are often 500 or 550 deep and a modern carcass does not land on the same line. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A twenty-year-old run is replaced to its own shape.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. 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.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Level the units first, measure the shape second.