Worktop replacement in Upney

Yes. Upney is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG11. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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 work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The larder had a cold shelf and an air brick straight through to the outside, and that brick is usually still open behind whatever now stands in front of it. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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.

Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop installation. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Housings set out for laminate are checked first.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Breakfast bars get the steel they never had. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not. Unlock the side gate and clear the alley of bins, bikes and pots, and arrange a plumber for the sink and an electrician if the hob is hard-wired. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Sequenced around access rather than around the workshop.

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. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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. Waste goes out the way the stone came in, so the route stays clear.

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. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The old larder leaves behind a thick cold shelf and a vent brick through the outer wall, and both have to go before that wall reads flat. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Stone is far heavier than what is coming off.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Where the dividing wall has come out there is a steel over the opening and a nib of the old wall left at each end, and a run turning that corner has to clear both nibs. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. The windows were steel to begin with and have been swapped for plastic in openings lined out to suit, so the reveal is now deeper than the brickwork behind it. The recess is measured again once the old top is out, since the original fit was often cut to whatever it found. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now.