Worktop replacement in St Mary Cray

Yes. St Mary Cray is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR5. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The internal stair is usually a straight flight with a tight top landing, and it is the landing rather than the flight that is the limit. Plaster bonded straight onto concrete comes away with the bottom course of tiles, leaving a band behind the upstand. What is under the old top is the real question. For maisonette stairwells we cut to fit and bring the pieces up on edge, because you cannot swing a full length round a half-landing.

Estate roads with parking bays and grass verges you cannot drive over, plus first-floor maisonettes reached by external stairs and a shared landing. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating. 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 plumber either side of us. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

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 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.

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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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. Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. 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.