Worktop replacement in Selsdon

Yes. Selsdon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

These kitchens have been retiled at least twice, and stripping the tiles takes the bottom band of plaster with them because the old laminate ran underneath rather than up to them. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. 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. 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. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.

Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. 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. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. 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. 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. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. 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.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Same shape, different cut list.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The rear extension is usually the newest and truest part of the building, so it is the older half of the kitchen that gives the trouble. 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 twenty-year-old run is replaced to its own shape.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. 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. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on.