Kitchen worktops in Arnos Grove

Yes. Semis around Bowes Road with the original small rear kitchen still in place in a lot of cases, plus a fair number of converted maisonettes where the kitchen is a narrow galley in the back addition, 600mm clear between runs. Galley layouts here mean two parallel tops rather than one long one. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1930s semi, 1930s purpose-built flat and post-war maisonette. These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. This is the most managed day we do. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Bowes Road and the North Circular approach carry heavy traffic with no stopping, so access comes off the quieter residential streets. Maisonettes have their own front door and a straight stair, usually with a tight turn at the top. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. In a true galley the two runs have to be templated together - if one wall bows the gap closes and the appliance doors stop clearing.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units kept, surface changed. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.