Worktop replacement in North Ealing

Yes. North Ealing is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original joinery is deep and stands proud of the plaster, so the run is plotted to the units rather than to the wall behind them. Any island overhang past about 300mm will not carry weight on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or brackets have to be let into the units first, and that is agreed at template stage, not on fit day. The wall behind the old top has not been seen in years. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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.

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. The old top leaves by the route the new one arrives on. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. The strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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 carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Nothing else in the room has to change. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The island top is the one that may want its own slab. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Programme work takes the flats in sequence.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Level the units first, measure the shape second.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.