Worktop replacement in South Wimbledon

Yes. South Wimbledon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. The old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The old top hid it; the new one will not. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. 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 skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. 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. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration. 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 street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. 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. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Laminate hides what the gables are really doing.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The shape is already there to be measured, which makes the template straightforward and leaves the strip-out as the part that actually needs planning. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time.

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. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. 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.