Worktop replacement in Wood Lane

Yes. Wood Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W12. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Timber-frame construction with plasterboard linings means every fixing has to find a stud, and a peninsula end needs proper support built in beforehand. The room itself is the easy part: walls are plumb, corners are square and the floor is flat, so scribes are minimal and joins can be tight. Sound carcasses are the one condition. Curved facades mean some back edges are genuinely not straight - digital template it rather than trusting the drawings the developer hands you.

Every building is managed, with a loading bay booked through the concierge, a contractor induction and a goods lift that has to be reserved in a time slot. Wood Lane itself carries heavy shopping-centre traffic with bus lanes and restricted stopping, and basement service yards have height barriers that rule out a high-roof van. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop installation and worktop templating. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The laminate has been covering it up. Book the service lift, loading bay and concierge access for the full day, and confirm the building's permitted working hours in writing. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. 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.