Worktop replacement in Nunhead

Yes. Nunhead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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 come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The larder under the stairs is usually still there and still opens into the kitchen, so the run stops at a door that cannot be moved. 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. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old top hid it. The drawing will not.

Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop installation. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A void week is the entire schedule. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Level the units first, measure the shape second. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting 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. Residents are given written notice before anyone attends, and that notice period rather than the workshop is what governs the earliest sensible start. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Two visits mean two people taking a day off.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. A surface swap is the fastest upgrade available on a kitchen that is otherwise sound. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Where a side return has been infilled, the join between old brick and new blockwork lands mid-run and the two faces are never in one plane. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Money does not move until the template is done. An under-stairs cupboard eats one end of most of these kitchens, and the run stops at a door that has to keep opening. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Water damage under a sink is the usual find.