Worktop replacement in Tokyngton and Brent Park

Yes. Tokyngton and Brent Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA9, NW10. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. 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. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day.

Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. 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. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. Half a day of parking buys half a job.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. 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 managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. 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.

An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. 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. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be. 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. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. 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.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. There is nearly always a boxed soil stack or a service riser in a corner of the run, and it is rarely mentioned at enquiry. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Twenty years of settlement is measured, not argued with.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. 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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. What is behind the old top decides the day.

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. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The route is protected once and then used four times.