Worktop replacement in South Ealing

Yes. South Ealing is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. 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. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances.

A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. 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. Out and in happen along the same protected route. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

Bi-fold or sliding doors at the end of the return mean the run finishes against a frame rather than a wall, and a frame gives nothing to scribe into and no movement to take up. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The old cut-outs prove nothing. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Void periods do not extend to suit a lead time.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The hall is the only way in and out for whoever lives there, so it is cleared and then kept clear for as long as pieces are moving. 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 van stands for both movements, not just the delivery.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The units are relevelled before anything new is bedded.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. No money is taken before the template happens. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.