Worktop replacement in Pollards Hill

Yes. Pollards Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16, CR4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The window cill clears a worktop by very little, which settles how tall the upstand under it can be before anyone has drawn a thing. 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. Sound carcasses are the one condition. A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances.

A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. 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 and worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now. 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. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. 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.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The original plan had one sink position, and moving it means taking a waste through a wall that does not want to be cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. What comes off tells you what goes on.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The hot water cylinder sits in a cupboard opening off the kitchen or the landing above it, and the pipework to it drops through the corner of the room. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.