Worktop replacement in New Southgate

Yes. New Southgate is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N11. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Barnet. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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 one-hour window will not hold a two-way job. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. 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. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day.

A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. 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. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The annexe top goes in on the same day.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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. Residents are given written notice before anyone attends, and that notice period rather than the workshop is what governs the earliest sensible start. 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.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The kitchen normally sits in the back addition or a later side return, which puts the run against the oldest and least straight wall in the building. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Water damage under a sink is the usual find.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. The staircase rises over the back room in a good number of these, so a sloping bulkhead sits over one end of the run and a piece cannot be stood on edge beneath it. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. Nothing goes back on carcasses the building has pulled out of square.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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.