Worktop replacement in Tooting

Yes. Tooting is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW17. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. 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. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. 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. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in.

A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full 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. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. 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. 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 and worktop splashbacks & upstands. Where several adults share the cooking the kitchen is in use most of the day, so a fitting slot has to be agreed with more people than usual. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday. Households sharing a house tend to want two prep areas rather than one, which usually means an island as well as a perimeter run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.

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. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Whoever lives there hears the timing first.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. A suspension for the full day beats half a day lost.

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. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. A good number of these blocks are large panel system builds, where the wall is a precast unit with a grouted joint and nothing gets cut into it. 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.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The original units were screwed to timber grounds set into the wall, and where those were torn out the plaster was patched rather than replaced. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The old top comes off in pieces, not whole.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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.