Worktop replacement in Parsloes

Yes. Parsloes is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM9. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. 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. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The gas enters at the back of the house and the pipe to the hob crosses the room at low level in a boxing along the skirting. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. What is under the old top is the real question. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 route is protected once and then used four times. 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. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate has been covering it up. Sort a parking bay or permit near the entrance, confirm the lift is in service and get us the door codes, and tell us about any asbestos survey on the flat before we start stripping out. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Found at template, not on fit day.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. 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. It usually explains the odd filler piece or strip of beading in the existing run that nobody could account for. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Door openings and the hall were set to a generous standard, so a long piece turns in from the front without being stood on end to do it. Plaster bonded straight onto concrete comes away with the bottom course of tiles, leaving a band behind the upstand. Sound carcasses are the one condition.