Worktop replacement in Manor Park

Yes. Manor Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E12. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. 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.

Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. 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. What is under the old top is the real question. In the converted flats the kitchen was never designed as one, so services run in surface trunking and the top needs notching rather than a clean scribe.

Terraced streets with permit bays and a lot of parked cars, plus a level crossing and rail bridges that restrict which end of some streets you can enter from. Converted upper flats have a shared hall, a straight stair and a landing that will not take a full-length piece around the corner. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. 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 sets what the day actually looks like. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

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. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. 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.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Sound carcasses are the condition.