Kitchen worktops in Bakers Arms

Yes. Terraces off the junction have back-addition kitchens of 2.2m to 2.8m, and the flats above the shopping parade have narrow kitchens fitted along one wall with limited daylight. Many terraces here have been converted to two flats, so kitchens sit in rooms never designed for them. 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. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A panel carried past a live lane gets a second pair of hands.

Victorian terrace, flat over shop and post-war infill block. These flats have been reconfigured more than once, so the kitchen often sits in what was a bedroom with services run a long way to reach it. Post-war terraces are typically blockwork or early lightweight block with a hard render coat, and the kitchen has usually been reconfigured at least once, leaving patched areas of newer plaster next to original render that sit at different depths. The tile bed comes off before anything is measured.

The junction is a major bus corridor with red route sections and loading bans, so drops happen on the side streets which are permit-controlled and busy. Above-shop flats have a shared side door, a steep straight stair and no lift, so anything over about 2.2m needs jointing. Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. 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. The route is protected once and then used four times.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty. Rented and converted flats here mean a lot of like-for-like replacements around existing sinks and hobs, so the old top gets measured before it comes out.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. External corners are mitred, not butted. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Nothing about it is a discovery on fitting day. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. A tired carcass is said before, not discovered after. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run: short lengths, few joins, and a lot to work around. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The batch is held while the tops are cut, or the colour drifts.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Blockwork with a hard render that has been patched over decades looks modern and behaves nothing like it. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. A return into a reveal is its own scribed piece.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Nothing this long gets walked while a warden is circling.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. 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 was scribed thin. Stone cannot be.