Worktop replacement in West Norwood

Yes. West Norwood is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE27. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Half a day of parking buys half a job. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The flat entrance door is a certified fire door on a closer, and taking it off for an hour means dealing with the seals and the closer before the day ends. 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. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The alcove was never square and it still is not.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. 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. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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 carry happens twice here, so the distance counts twice.

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. A builder-finish kitchen upgrades in a morning. 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. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Replacement suits occupied stock better than a strip-out.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The wall behind the old top is rarely the wall on the drawing.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. 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 route is protected once and then used four times.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. Old top out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon, with a plumber either side of us. Nothing new goes down until the run reads level end to end.