Kitchen worktops in Angel

Yes. A dense mix of period flats and newer apartments, where period conversions put the kitchen in a rear room or a former closet wing on a 2.4-3m run, while converted warehouses and newer blocks give open-plan runs with an island. Whole-house Georgian jobs put the kitchen at lower ground with garden access and a long single wall. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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. The old tops have to go somewhere as well.

Georgian terrace, early Victorian terrace, warehouse conversion and new-build apartment. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. 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. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.

Upper Street is a red route with bus lanes, City Road and Pentonville Road are red routes on the southern edge, and the side streets are controlled Monday to Friday with some seven-day bays near the Green. Several surrounding streets sit inside camera-enforced traffic filters, so the route in for a van is not the route a satnav gives you. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The building keeps working around us. Check the filtered-street layout before fit day, because a wrong turn through a camera gate costs more than the delivery and the legal approach usually adds a long carry.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Offered up twice, bonded once. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Access rules can differ from one door to the next. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Sealant seals. It does not fit.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. 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. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. It sets the crew: two fitters where the route is straightforward, four where it is not. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.