Worktop replacement in Royal Arsenal Riverside

Yes. Royal Arsenal Riverside is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE18. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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.

Dot-and-dab plasterboard bellies at a taped internal angle, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. The room itself is the easy part: walls are plumb, corners are square and the floor is flat, so scribes are minimal and joins can be tight. What is under the old top is the real question. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. 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. Out and in happen along the same protected route. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. 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. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. A specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A void week is the entire schedule.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The old cut-outs prove nothing. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. Book the service lift, loading bay and concierge access for the full day, and confirm the building's permitted working hours in writing. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units stay, so the flat is usable that evening.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. 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. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. 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. Any overhang gets underpinned first.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. How old the kitchen is decides how long preparation takes.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.