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Living Without a Kitchen Sink for Two Weeks
The part of a countertop project people underestimate is not the install, it is the fortnight in the middle. Depending on the shop and the job, template to install runs one to three weeks, and for most of that the kitchen has no work surface and no sink.
Why the old top comes off first
On a replacement, the template usually has to be taken against the bare cabinets, because the existing top hides the actual cabinet line and its own thickness distorts the measurement. Some shops will template over an existing laminate top and accept the small inaccuracy. Most will not on stone.
That means demolition happens at template, not at install, and the gap begins immediately. Ask which approach your shop takes, because it changes the plan considerably.
Planning the window
Move the microwave, the kettle, and the toaster somewhere with a plug and a flat surface. A folding table in the dining room works. The sink is the harder loss: a bathroom sink handles hands and small items but not a roasting tin, and washing up in a bath is grim after day three.
A temporary sheet of plywood laid across the base cabinets gives you a working surface and costs almost nothing. Some shops will do this as a courtesy, most will if asked.
The dishwasher
A dishwasher usually fastens to the underside of the countertop. With the top off, it has nothing holding it and will tip forward when the door opens loaded. It can normally still be used if it is screwed to the adjacent cabinet sides instead, but confirm with whoever removed the top rather than assuming.
Compressing the gap
The realistic levers are having every decision finalised before template so nothing pauses the shop, and having the plumber booked for install day at the time you book the install rather than after. Both remove days that are otherwise lost to waiting for someone to answer a message. See Digital Templating and Why the Kitchen Has to Be Ready for what has to be ready before the templater arrives at all.
A realistic kitchen setup for the gap
Treat it as a short camping trip in your own house rather than an emergency. Set up a station somewhere with a socket and a flat surface: kettle, toaster, microwave, and a chopping board. A folding table, a dining table with a protective cover, or a sheet of ply across two trestles all work.
Fill a washing up bowl at the bath or an outside tap and carry it. Paper plates for a fortnight is not an environmental catastrophe and it removes the single most annoying part of the whole period. A slow cooker and an air fryer between them cover most meals without needing a hob, which matters if the cooktop is also disconnected.
Protecting what is exposed
With the top off, the base cabinet carcasses are open at the top and whatever is inside them is exposed to dust from the removal and, later, from the install. Empty the base cabinets before the old top comes off, or at minimum cover the contents.
The cut ends of the cabinet sides and any exposed chipboard should stay dry. If the sink area is open and anybody is using the space, lay a sheet of ply or hardboard across the sink cabinet so nothing is dropped into it and the carcass does not take a knock.
What can be done in parallel
The gap is the ideal window for anything that would otherwise have to be worked around a finished countertop. Painting the walls, since you can cut in at the top of the base cabinets without masking a stone edge. Fitting or repainting the cabinet doors. Replacing a floor if that is in scope. Running any additional electrical circuits behind where the splashback will go.
Doing these during the gap rather than after is genuinely faster and lower risk, because a new countertop is the thing everybody is most anxious about damaging. The one exception is the backsplash tiling, which normally has to wait until the top is in so it can sit on it.
Confirming the install date properly
Ask the shop to confirm the install date in writing at the point the layout is signed off, and ask what their notice period is if the date moves. Slabs occasionally break in the shop, and machines occasionally go down, and a shop that tells you the same day is being straight with you.
Book the plumber for the day after install at the same moment you accept the install date. This is the single most useful thing you can do to shorten the gap, because the plumber's diary is the constraint that most often adds days at the end, long after the stone is sitting perfectly in place.
What a realistic timeline looks like written down
Put the dates on paper and the gap stops feeling open ended. Cabinets complete and signed off on a date. Template booked for two to three days after that, which gives room for any snagging. Layout drawing issued within two or three days of the template and signed the same day it arrives. Fabrication of one to three weeks from sign off, which the shop will quote. Install on a confirmed date. Plumber the following morning.
Six lines, and each one has an owner. The value of writing it down is not the schedule itself, which will slip somewhere, but that a slip becomes visible immediately rather than three weeks later. When the layout drawing has not arrived four days after the template, a written timeline turns that into a phone call today instead of a realisation next week.
Plan the gap as a fortnight without a sink rather than an inconvenience that will somehow resolve itself. Set up a temporary station with power and a flat surface, empty and cover the base cabinets, secure the dishwasher so it cannot tip, and use the window for any painting or flooring that would otherwise have to be worked around a finished top. Then book the plumber for the morning after install at the moment you accept the install date. That single step removes more delay from the end of the project than anything else available to you.