Worktop replacement in Walworth

Yes. Walworth is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE17. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. 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. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What is behind the old top decides the day.

Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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 new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The beading was covering a bowed wall. 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 staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Programme work takes the flats in sequence.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. 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. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. A sound carcass takes stone; a soft one gets replaced first.

Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. It usually explains the odd filler piece or strip of beading in the existing run that nobody could account for. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were.

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 Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The sink is chosen before the cut list is set.