Worktop replacement in Strand-on-the-Green

Yes. Strand-on-the-Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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. Same units, straighter line, better surface. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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 new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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 window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. 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. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now. 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 owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Somebody has to own the skip.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. 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.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed.

Order is what matters: a slab is templated before it is cut, so an uncut slab is straightforward and one already machined for another kitchen is not. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week.