Worktop replacement in Southfields

Yes. Southfields is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW18, SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. 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 one-hour window will not hold a two-way job. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Sash windows in the addition sit low and the sill can land under standard worktop height, so the top is notched round it or the run stops short of it. 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. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be.

A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. 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. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. 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. The strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop installation first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Repairable in place beats replaced whole. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A deposit deduction rarely covers a new top.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. What is behind the old top decides the day. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Strip-out and fit inside one access window.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The beading was covering a bowed wall.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Laminate hides what the gables are really doing.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind it. 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. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top.