Worktop replacement in Plaistow

Yes. Plaistow is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E13. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a 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. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

These were built late enough to have a damp course and proper footings, so the front of the house is close to true and the rear addition holding the kitchen is the part that has dropped. 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. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It was there long before we were.

Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. 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 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. One flat out of use at a time.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Same shape, different cut list. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old top hid it. The drawing will not. 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 leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Wear is what the next inventory records.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first.

There is nothing to pay before the template visit. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Door fronts and drawers get checked against the new thickness.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The old cut-outs prove nothing.