Worktop replacement in Willesden

Yes. Willesden is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW10, NW2. It is worked on our north west London run, along with the rest of Brent. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. 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. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The rear room is generous with a chimney breast in one corner, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends whatever the plan drew. 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. The fabric gets checked while it is open. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.

Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. 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. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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 old tops leave in one movement rather than piece by piece.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. 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 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. 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. Between tenancies is the only window there is.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Notice goes out before the crew is booked.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. The party wall is the straightest surface in the house and everything else has moved away from it over a century. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

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. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. These were built with a scullery that has since been swallowed by an extension, leaving a change of floor level roughly where the run crosses. Each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped, because nothing in the room is straight enough to drop into. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. 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. A surface swap is the fastest upgrade available on a kitchen that is otherwise sound. One plot replaced years on, matched or otherwise.