Worktop replacement in South Croydon

Yes. South Croydon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste run is planned, not improvised. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A range sitting in a chimney recess is common, and the flanking pieces are cut with the manufacturer clearance built into the template. These are the multi-piece jobs: long runs, a large island and often a range cooker that cannot be moved, so the stone is templated in several pieces and how the vein runs across the joins matters. Sound carcasses are the one condition. Fitting a run against a chimney breast in a converted reception room means two returns and two scribes on one piece, which takes longer to template than a straight wall twice the length.

Brighton Road is a main bus route with limited stopping, and the side roads run steeply uphill with permit bays. Converted flats have communal front doors and original staircases. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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. Have a fitter or joiner fix and level the island units beforehand, and get the sink, taps, hob and any range on site before templating so we cut to the actual appliances. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Plumber either side of us.