Worktop replacement in South Bermondsey

Yes. South Bermondsey is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE16. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. 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. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

A service duct runs between the kitchen and the bathroom stacked above it, and access to that duct stays open whatever the layout does. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one.

A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. 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. The strip-out is planned around it. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. 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.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It was there long before we were. Sort a parking bay or permit near the entrance, confirm the lift is in service and get us the door codes, and tell us about any asbestos survey on the flat before we start stripping out. These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Whoever owns the carcasses owns that call.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The ceiling is a concrete soffit with a skim on it, so there is nothing to fix into overhead and no void to hide anything in. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Units checked before stone goes on them.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The old top hid it. The drawing will not.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Where the kitchen has been opened into the living room the opening was trimmed with a steel, and a stub of the old wall was left standing at one end. Old top out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon, with a plumber either side of us. Whatever the old top hid comes to light.