Worktop replacement in North Ealing

Yes. North Ealing is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is run from the High Wycombe side, covering Buckinghamshire & Berkshire. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. The old island top is frequently sitting on units that were never fixed down, which is fine for laminate and not for stone. Sound carcasses are the one condition. Waterfall ends are cut and dry-assembled in the workshop, because a mitred external corner is not something you fix on site in someone's kitchen.

Wide roads with garages and drives on most properties, so parking is rarely a problem. The Hanger Lane gyratory is the only real obstacle on the way in. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. 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.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Height change is checked before we cut. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Found at template, not on fit day. Have a fitter or joiner fix and level the island units beforehand, and get the sink, taps, hob and any range on site before templating so we cut to the actual appliances. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sound carcasses are the condition.