Worktop replacement in Olympia

Yes. Olympia is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. 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 suspension for the full day beats half a day lost. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. 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. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one.

Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. 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. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. 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. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It was there long before we were. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Out and in on the same permission.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Cutting the old top out saves the units below it.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. 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. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. 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. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.