Worktop replacement in Newington

Yes. Newington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1, SE17. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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 run is planned, not improvised. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. 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. What is under the old top is the real question. Converted flats mean unknown floors - lift a laminate top here and you often find chipboard carcasses on a springy floor that need bracing before stone goes on.

Dense terraced streets with permit-only bays all day and no driveways, so a suspension or an early start is the only realistic way to get a slab trolley to the front door. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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 strip-out is planned around it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop templating. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Found at template, not on fit day. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Sound carcasses are the condition.