Worktop replacement in Thamesmead

Yes. Thamesmead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE28, SE2. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The first kitchen units were metal and screwed straight into the blockwork, and their plugs are still in the wall behind whatever plaster went over them. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. 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. That is agreed before a plumber is booked. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. One plot replaced years on, matched or otherwise. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Any overhang gets underpinned first. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. 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. Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Out and in on the same permission.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. 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 way out is measured with the way in.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The chimney breast in the kitchen served a back boiler behind the living room fire, so the flue is a shared one and the breast is deeper than a fireplace would need. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Specified for wear rather than for the photograph.