Worktop replacement in Scrattons Farm

Yes. Scrattons Farm is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The window sits in the middle of the run over the sink, and its board and cill set the limit on how tall an upstand can be. Post-war terraces have small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run, so runs are short and joins are rare, but there are usually two corners and a window cill to work around in a couple of metres. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What is behind the old top decides the day.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. 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. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. 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 installation. 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 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. 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.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The beading was covering a bowed wall. 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. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. 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. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. Chipboard carcasses under the sink swollen from a slow leak will not take stone and get replaced before fit day. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. No payment is due before the template. Units are often only 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors need checking against it. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Door fronts and drawers get checked against the new thickness.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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.