Worktop replacement in Portsoken

Yes. Portsoken is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1, EC3N. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The kitchen is a small room off a hall with one external wall, and the window in it is the only relief in the run. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. 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. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both. 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. The old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Same shape, different cut list. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The laminate has been covering it up. Empty the base units completely and have a plumber disconnect the sink, tap and any washing machine plumbed in under the worktop before we arrive. Residents are given written notice before anyone attends, and that notice period rather than the workshop is what governs the earliest sensible start. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The surface changes and the kitchen stays the one they know.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. 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. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Found at template, not on fit day.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The communal entrance opens straight off the pavement with no lobby, so the carry starts at the kerb and turns immediately. The two corners and the cill in a couple of metres are all re-measured once the old top is off. The fabric gets checked while it is open.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The old cut-outs prove nothing.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. The stair is a straight concrete flight with a quarter landing at each floor and a solid balustrade wall alongside it. A deeper top on shallow units overhangs at the front, so the doors and drawer fronts are checked before it is bedded. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.