Worktop replacement in Shirley

Yes. Shirley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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.

Bungalow kitchens are frequently extended into the rear or opened into the roof space, so the room is part original and part new build. 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. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled. 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. 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.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 room is cleared for the way out as much as the way in. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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.

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. 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. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.

A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. 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.

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. 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. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. 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.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. 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. The chimney breast in the kitchen once took a copper or a back boiler, and whatever is left of it is rarely square to the rest of the room. 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.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first.

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. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. These were built with a coal store and an outside lavatory off the back, and where those got absorbed into the kitchen the walls around them are thinner and later. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. A single day, planned properly.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.