Kitchen worktops in Arsenal

Yes. Tight Edwardian terraces with small rear kitchens of 2.4-3m sitting a few hundred metres from converted stadium apartments with modern open-plan kitchens, fitted islands and square walls. Two completely different fits, and the terraces rarely have room to change the layout at all. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. 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. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day.

Edwardian terrace, converted stadium apartment, Victorian terrace and post-war block. Edwardian terraces are wider and taller than the Victorian houses next to them, so the kitchen usually takes a full-width rear room rather than a narrow outrigger. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints.

Matchday road closures and residents-only enforcement make scheduling the real problem, since anything booked on a fixture day is effectively lost. The apartment blocks have controlled underground parking and service lifts that need booking in advance. A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. Disconnection happens before the old top is lifted, not during.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week. Book template and fit dates around the fixture list, because a closed road on the day wastes the whole slot and the material comes straight back on the van.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. One datum for every run in the room. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old top hid it. The drawing will not. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

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. Somebody has to own the skip. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The awkward piece goes in before the easy ones.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. The rear extension is frequently original rather than added, which means it is solidly built and just as far out of square as the rest of the house. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. 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. The strip-out is planned around it.