Worktop replacement in St Ann's

Yes. St Ann's is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N15. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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. 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.

The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day. Knock-throughs in this stock usually leave a 100mm nib at the chimney breast, and the top has to be scribed round it - it is the single most common re-cut on these jobs.

Residential streets are permit-controlled and narrow, and several have modal filters and planters that stop you driving straight through - check the route before the day rather than relying on a satnav. 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. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. That is agreed before a plumber is booked. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop installation. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed.