Worktop replacement in Stockwell

Yes. Stockwell is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW9, SW8. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. 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. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. 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. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It was there long before we were.

Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. 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. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Laminate hides what the gables are really doing. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The old top hid it. The drawing will not. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Somebody has to own the skip.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. 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 old top is heavy waste, and booked as waste.

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. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. 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. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.