Worktop replacement in Ravensbury

Yes. Ravensbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR4, SM4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. 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. 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. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Where the kitchen is on the entrance level, the piece comes off the deck and turns straight in without going up or down at all. 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. The fabric gets checked while it is open. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up.

Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. 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. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Found at template, not on fit day. 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. Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sequenced around access rather than around the workshop.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Height change is checked before we cut.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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. Waste goes out the way the stone came in, so the route stays clear.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. The shape is already there to be measured, which makes the template straightforward and leaves the strip-out as the part that actually needs planning. Same shape, different cut list.