Worktop replacement in Sipson

Yes. Sipson is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB7. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Kitchens in the upper flats often sit in the return wing at half-landing level, so there are three or four steps inside the flat before the room is reached at all. 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. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Housings set out for laminate are checked first. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A builder-finish kitchen upgrades in a morning.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be. 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. A landlord with several similar flats usually wants one specification repeated, so the material, the edge detail and the upstand height are recorded and reused rather than rechosen each time. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Replacement suits occupied stock better than a strip-out.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The units are relevelled before anything new is bedded.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. What is behind the old top decides the day.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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.