Worktop replacement in New Cross

Yes. New Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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 waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Sound carcasses are the one condition. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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.

Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. 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. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop installation. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. 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. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. 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 galley run down a side-return extension usually measures longer than a slab will give in one length, so a join is designed in from the start rather than discovered. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

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. 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. Have a plumber booked to disconnect the sink, tap and waste first thing and reconnect after we have gone, and clear the hallway and stairs completely so we can carry slabs through the house. Quartz is the sensible default in a rental: nothing to seal, nothing to maintain, and nothing an incoming tenant needs briefing on. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A tired carcass is said before, not discovered after.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. 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. Side-return kitchens are long and narrow with one outside wall, and the wall the run sits against is often the oldest, least straight surface in the house. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Yield is worked out fresh for the new material.

Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Half a day of parking buys half a job.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. A conversion takes kitchen waste to a stack added to the outside of the building, which fixes the sink position long before anyone draws a layout. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Floors are the original joists with a later acoustic layer laid over them, and that layer is not flat where it meets the doorways. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. The old top hid it; the new one will not.