Worktop replacement in Seething Wells

Yes. Seething Wells is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are KT6. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Kingston upon Thames. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. The wall behind the old top has not been seen in years. Exposed structure means the back edge is not a straight line at all, and a scribe of fifteen or twenty millimetres across a run is normal. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop installation. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Same day, because the void is the whole budget.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Height change is checked before we cut. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. 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. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units stay, so the flat is usable that evening.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. A thicker top changes what clears the top drawer.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Same shape, different cut list.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. 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. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.