Worktop replacement in Northwick Park

Yes. Northwick Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA1, HA3. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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 strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Steel windows sit in narrow reveals with a slim cill, which leaves almost no depth for an upstand to return into. The lift car is usually too short and too low to take a full-length piece flat or on edge, so stone either goes up the communal stairs with their half-landings and winders, or the run is designed with joins that suit the staircase rather than the kitchen. The fabric gets checked while it is open. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem.

Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. 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 van stands for both movements, not just the delivery. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A deposit deduction rarely covers a new top. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement. Get the managing agent's or freeholder's approval and the permitted hours confirmed beforehand, and agree with the porter who protects the communal carpet, stonework and lift. Where the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Nothing to reseal is the point in a let.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The laminate has been covering it up.

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. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Same shape, different cut list.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. This is a logistics job before it is a stone job, and the lift car is usually the single biggest constraint on the design. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The wall behind the old top is rarely the wall on the drawing.