Worktop replacement in Thornton Heath

Yes. Thornton Heath is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR7. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. A resident bay and a shared-use bay can sit on the same street under different rules, and it is usually the shared one a visitor permit or a ticket touches. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The addition is a brick narrower than the house it hangs off, which leaves a stub of the original rear wall standing square to the run at the doorway end. 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. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now.

The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. 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. The route is protected once and then used four times. A shared-use bay allows a paid stay up to a set maximum, and that maximum is routinely shorter than the working day the job needs. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week. 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. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A straight swap is the exception in an older room. 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 staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Whoever lives there hears the timing first.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. A suspension for the full day beats half a day lost.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The lean-to roof drains into a valley gutter against the addition next door, and a long leak there shows at the head of the kitchen wall rather than on the ceiling. 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. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Ceilings are generous and the rooms are narrow, so the runs are long, the aisle is tight and there is nowhere to stand a slab on edge. 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 tiles above will want attention once the old top goes.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. 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.