Worktop replacement in Pitshanger

Yes. Pitshanger is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The original floor is timber over a deep ventilated void with air bricks right round the perimeter, and the extension slab butts straight up against it. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. One flat out of use at a time.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. 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 stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day. 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. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Replacement suits occupied stock better than a strip-out.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be.

The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. 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. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. A suspension for the full day beats half a day lost.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Where the original steel windows survive at the rear, the frame sits almost flush with the inside face and there is no reveal to lose a joint in. The recess is measured again once the old top is out, since the original fit was often cut to whatever it found. Nothing goes back on carcasses the building has pulled out of square.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Out and in happen along the same protected route.