Worktop replacement in Wimbledon

Yes. Wimbledon is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW19. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on 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. The old tops have to go somewhere as well. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The rear wall is usually a single brick thick and has been rendered, patched and re-rendered, so it bows in and out along the length of the run. 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. Nothing goes back on carcasses the building has pulled out of square. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. 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.

Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. 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. Timing the two carries is most of the planning. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Access out counts as much as access in.

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. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them. 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. Between tenancies is the only window there is.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. 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 supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. 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. 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. Notice goes out before the crew is booked.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Deep original skirting is often left in behind the units, standing them off the wall, so the back edge of the stone is plotted where the carcasses actually sit. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. These were built late enough to have a damp course and proper footings, so the front of the house is close to true and the rear addition holding the kitchen is the part that has dropped. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. What is under the old top is the real question.