Worktop replacement in Old Bexley

Yes. Old Bexley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA5. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day.

A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. 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. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop fabrication ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. 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 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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 waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. One day out of use, agreed in advance.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Concierge buildings want the goods entrance, a booked lift and proof of insurance, all of which is straightforward when it is asked for a week out. 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.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes.