Worktop replacement in Newbury Park

Yes. Newbury Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG2. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The pantry was a half-brick enclosure in the corner of the room, and where it has been taken out the wall behind it is made good brickwork rather than original plaster. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. The old top hid it; the new one will not. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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.

A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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.

One of the three we are asked for most, although worktop installation is asked for more. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Nothing else in the room has to change. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.

The two returns in a U are close to the same size and it is tempting to nest them side by side, except that the veining then mirrors across the room and reads as deliberate for the wrong reason. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It was there long before we were. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Programme work takes the flats in sequence.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The old top hid it. The drawing will not.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The scullery floor was quarry tile bedded on concrete and it is often still under a laminate, sitting lower than the boards in the room it now joins. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. Same units, straighter line, better surface.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A void week is the entire schedule.