Worktop replacement in Turnpike Lane

Yes. Turnpike Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N8, N22. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Haringey. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

The combination boiler hangs on whichever wall happened to be external, and that decision has already used up a stretch of the only wall the run wanted. 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. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A straight swap is the exception in an older room.

Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. 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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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 loads, one space, one day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Housings set out for laminate are checked first.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. 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 ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Nothing to reseal is the point in a let.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. A surface swap is the fastest upgrade available on a kitchen that is otherwise sound. A builder-finish kitchen upgrades in a morning.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. 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.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. The front door of the building sits at the top of a step off a tiled path, so the carry starts outside the building rather than at the door of the flat. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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.