Worktop replacement in Tottenham

Yes. Tottenham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N17. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The partitions put in at conversion are studwork standing on the old floor, so they take a fixing well but carry nothing, and a heavy end panel needs a different answer. 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 units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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.

The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. 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. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. 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. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. 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.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were. 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. Where a letting agent sits between us and the owner the approval passes through two sets of hands, so a quote has to be clear enough to forward without a covering explanation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Wear is what the next inventory records.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. 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.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. The flat entrance door is a certified fire door on a closer, and taking it off for an hour means dealing with the seals and the closer before the day ends. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on.