Worktop replacement in Roxeth

Yes. Roxeth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Harrow. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. A suspension for the full day beats half a day lost. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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. Sound carcasses are the one condition. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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 van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. Chosen against the doors that are staying. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Same footprint, different tolerances. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Expected downtime beats discovered downtime.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A thicker top changes what clears the top drawer.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. The old top hid it; the new one will not.