Worktop replacement in Sydenham

Yes. Sydenham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE26. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Ceilings in the principal rooms are three metres or more, so a full-height panel behind a hob is a taller piece here than the same kitchen would need anywhere else. 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. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out. 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. The beading was covering a bowed wall.

Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. 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. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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 old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A deposit deduction rarely covers a new top. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week.

A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Any overhang gets underpinned first. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. A tired carcass is said before, not discovered after.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. 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. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. 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. The route is protected once and then used four times.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top.