Kitchen worktops in Bell Green

Yes. Interwar semis and postwar terraces around the retail park; kitchens are rear rooms with a side door, usually opened into the dining room to give an L of about 3m plus a short return. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear.

1930s semi, postwar estate, 1970s terrace and 2000s infill. Where the dividing wall has come out there is a steel over the opening and a nib of the old wall left at each end, and a run turning that corner has to clear both nibs. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. The fabric gets checked while it is open.

Good vehicle access off the main roads and the retail park with drives or hardstandings on most houses, though the estate cul-de-sacs get tight for turning. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Straightforward suburban fits, but the 1930s back walls are rarely plumb so allow for scribing at the return.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The managing agent books the lift, not the household. 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.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The windows were steel to begin with and have been swapped for plastic in openings lined out to suit, so the reveal is now deeper than the brickwork behind it. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The original room is timber over a ventilated void and the newer half is a slab, so the floor gives underfoot on one side of the junction and not on the other. The recess is measured again once the old top is out, since the original fit was often cut to whatever it found. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.