Worktop replacement in Yiewsley

Yes. Yiewsley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB7. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink 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. The floor has dropped since the kitchen went in. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The stack was boxed in after the kitchen went in.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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. The old top leaves by the route the new one arrives on. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not. 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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. A leaseholder still needs the building to consent.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The strip-out is the part worth planning.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. 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. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The alcove was never square and it still is not.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Where the walls have been dry-lined over the old lath there is a void behind the board and no solid fixing until a batten is found. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Nothing new goes down until the run reads level end to end.