Worktop replacement in Oakwood

Yes. Oakwood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N14. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Enfield. 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. 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. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The hall is parquet or original boards in a good many of these, and it is the surface that takes the traffic for the whole of a fitting day. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.

Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us.

A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Level the units first, measure the shape second. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The plumber is booked by whoever holds the contract.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. A serving hatch through to the dining room is common, and closing one up leaves a panel of newer wall exactly where the run passes. 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.

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. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The units stay, the surface changes.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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. The route is protected once and then used four times.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. The old tops leave by the same route, so the carry out and the skip or van are planned alongside the carry in. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in.