Worktop replacement in Westbourne Park

Yes. Westbourne Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W2, W9. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. The carry happens twice here, so the distance counts twice. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

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. 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. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. 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. It decides whether the old top leaves whole. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects 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. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan.

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. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Between tenancies is the only window there is.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. 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. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Replacement suits occupied stock better than a strip-out.

The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. Two loads share the one space here, the old tops waiting to go and the new stone waiting to come in. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The original stair has an open well running the full height of the building, which occasionally lets a long piece go up vertically where it would never take the turns. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none.