Worktop replacement in Ruislip Gardens

Yes. Ruislip Gardens is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. Sound carcasses are the one condition. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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 installation and worktop fabrication. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. What is behind the old top decides the day. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A leaseholder still needs the building to consent.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The beading was covering a bowed wall.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there.