Worktop replacement in Bickley

Yes. Bickley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR1. It is run from the New Malden side, covering South West London & Surrey. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. These are the multi-piece jobs: long runs, a large island and often a range cooker that cannot be moved, so the stone is templated in several pieces and how the vein runs across the joins matters. What is under the old top is the real question. The stock here justifies thicker material and mitred waterfall ends, and clients expect the island to be a single piece, so we plan the slab layout around the island first and let the perimeter take the joints.

Wide roads, in-and-out gravel drives and generous frontages mean the van gets close to the door, but the front steps on the older villas are often deep and the kitchen sits at the back down a long hallway. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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 strip-out is planned around it. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A plumber either side of us. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Found at template, not on fit day. Have a fitter or joiner fix and level the island units beforehand, and get the sink, taps, hob and any range on site before templating so we cut to the actual appliances. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Plumber either side of us.