Kitchen worktops in Balham

Yes. Whole-house terraces get the standard rear extension with a run and an island of about 2.2m, but a large share of the stock is converted flats where the kitchen has been fitted into a former reception room and is open to the living space. The 1930s mansion blocks have original narrow galleys that owners keep and simply re-top. A short lunchtime window of control exists to keep commuters off the street, and it still catches a trade van standing there for an hour. 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. We would rather ask than guess.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, 1930s art deco mansion block and Flat conversion. The partitions put in at conversion are studwork standing on the old floor, so they take a fixing well but carry nothing, and a heavy end panel needs a different answer. 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. Nothing goes back on carcasses the building has pulled out of square.

The High Road is a bus corridor with no standing, and the residential streets either side are permit-controlled with heavy parking pressure. Converted flats above ground level are reached by a communal stair with a half-landing and often a fire door at the top that has to come off its hinges. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. Same day, because the void is the whole budget. In the mansion blocks the original galley walls are solid brick and out of plumb top to bottom, so the upstand needs scribing separately from the worktop back edge.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. A tall panel that fits at the worktop will stand off the wall at the top unless the wall is dubbed out or the panel is scribed. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut. 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.

Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A tired carcass is said before, not discovered after. 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.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. 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. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Panel height is set by the extractor.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. The flat entrance door is a certified fire door on a closer, and taking it off for an hour means dealing with the seals and the closer before the day ends. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Boxed sash frames swallow a hundred millimetres of wall on each side of the opening, so the wall between a window and a corner is shorter than a plan makes it look. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. What is under the old top is the real question.