Worktop replacement in Norbury

Yes. Norbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. 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. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The bathroom upstairs sits directly over the kitchen, so its waste comes down in a boxed corner from floor to ceiling that no worktop is going to move. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since. 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. 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.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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 the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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 and worktop installation. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A void week is the entire schedule.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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 room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It was there long before we were. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Whoever owns the carcasses owns that call.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. 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. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The old top hid it. The drawing will not.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. It usually explains the odd filler piece or strip of beading in the existing run that nobody could account for. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Many of these had a bathroom or a WC built onto the far end of the addition, so the room now ends at a stud wall rather than at the original brickwork. 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. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.