Worktop replacement in Vauxhall

Yes. Vauxhall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW8, SE11. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Many were built with a solid sub-floor to the rear rooms, so the kitchen floor is concrete and level while the front of the house is suspended timber. 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 fabric gets checked while it is open. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. 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 car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. 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. The way out is measured with the way in. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. 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. 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. 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. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A sound carcass takes stone; a soft one gets replaced first.

The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. The old tops have to go somewhere as well.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Edwardian terraces are wider and taller than the Victorian houses next to them, so the kitchen usually takes a full-width rear room rather than a narrow outrigger. 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. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now.