Worktop replacement in Smithfield

Yes. Smithfield is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1A, EC1M. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Services run on the surface in these buildings, so conduit and pipework cross the wall behind the units and stand proud of it. Converted warehouses put the kitchen against original brick or blockwork that has never been made flat, so scribes of 15 to 20mm along a run are normal and every piece is templated to the wall exactly as it is rather than to a drawing. What is under the old top is the real question. 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. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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 particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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 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 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. Book the goods lift and loading bay for the day, clear a straight route through the open plan, and have a plumber on hand for the island services coming up through the floor. A let property is specified for durability and for a fixed window, and both of those are legitimate reasons to choose differently. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Notice goes out before the crew is booked.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A downstand over a run caps wall unit height before it caps anything else, and the splashback then takes its height from the steel rather than from the units. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Many of these kitchens are a fitted pod dropped into open floor, so three sides are free and only the fourth is ever scribed. Where brickwork bows enough that a full-depth piece cannot go back tight, the units move forward and the front overhang changes. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. An island pod with feeds coming up through the floor cannot be nudged, so the stone is cut to suit the island. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.