Worktop replacement in Sidcup

Yes. Sidcup is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are DA14, DA15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bexley. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. 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. The van has to stand through both halves of the day. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. 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. What is under the old top is the real question. 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. 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 car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. 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. Disconnection happens before the old top is lifted, not during. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. 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. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Same day, because the void is the whole budget.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Same shape, different cut list. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Repeat flats take the same replacement specification.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The window over the sink sits at about worktop height, so the run is set out around the sill and the reveal rather than under them. 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.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. 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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The old cut-outs prove nothing.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The strip-out is planned around it.