Worktop replacement in Stepney

Yes. Stepney is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. 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 strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. Post-war terraces have small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run, so runs are short and joins are rare, but there are usually two corners and a window cill to work around in a couple of metres. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What is behind the old top decides the day.

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. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. 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.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The strip-out is the part worth planning. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The beading was covering a bowed wall. Empty the base units completely and have a plumber disconnect the sink, tap and any washing machine plumbed in under the worktop before we arrive. Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. One day out of use, agreed in advance.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A stub wall divides the kitchen from the back lobby, and it rarely stayed where the original drawing put it. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A thicker top changes what clears the top drawer.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles.