Worktop replacement in Northfields

Yes. Northfields is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W13, W5. It is run from the High Wycombe side, covering Buckinghamshire & Berkshire. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. 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. What is under the old top is the real question. The layout is predictable but the party wall is always bowed, so you are cutting a full-length scribe on the flank run on effectively every job.

Dense terraced streets with permit-only parking and no driveways, and Northfield Avenue is the only through route and is narrow with parked cars both sides. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. 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. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A plumber either side of us.

The step or level change between the original room and the return is real, and the units need packing before stone goes across it. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units kept, surface changed.