Worktop replacement in Tufnell Park

Yes. Tufnell Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N7, NW5. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than 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. Loading out is loading in, done in reverse and heavier. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. 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. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there.

A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. 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. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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.

It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. 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.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. 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. The old top hid it; the new one will not.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. It usually explains the odd filler piece or strip of beading in the existing run that nobody could account for. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in.