Kitchen worktops in Bishop's Park

Yes. Terraces backing toward the river and the park have the usual rear kitchen with side-return infill at 3.2-3.8m, while the mansion flats overlooking the park keep original service kitchens of 2.4-3m with tall ceilings and a deep window reveal. In the riverside blocks the kitchen sits against the core with a peninsula facing the view, so the finished long edge is on show and needs a properly polished exposed end. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. 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. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian mansion flats, riverside apartment block and 1930s purpose-built flats. The meters sit in the hall or under the stairs on the way through, so the carry passes a cupboard door that has to be shut and protected before anything moves. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The age of the house sets the pace of it.

Home fixtures at the nearby football ground close roads and suspend parking across the streets between the river and Fulham Palace Road, which rules out those days entirely. The park and the river path mean several streets are dead ends, so the turning circle for a Luton needs checking rather than assumed. A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. 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. Both movements are planned as one.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands. Plenty of dead-end streets here, so check the van can turn round before it goes in loaded - reversing 100m with an A-frame is nobody's idea of a good start.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Whoever lives there hears the timing first. 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.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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 old top leaves by the route the new one arrives on.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. The slow parts are slow for a reason.