Kitchen worktops in Botany Bay

Yes. Green-belt hamlet with a handful of farmhouses and large detached houses. Kitchens are big rooms with a range cooker in the old chimney recess, a freestanding-look layout and thick 30mm or 40mm tops rather than the 20mm you see in the suburbs. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

farmhouse, Victorian cottage and large modern detached. A period cottage has low ceilings, thick rubble-filled walls and a floor that has never been level, and the worktop is the thing that has to look straight. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

Narrow lanes with no pavement, no lighting and passing places only, plus horses and farm traffic. A long-wheelbase van fits but reversing out is not an option, so turning space has to be confirmed first. Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened.

Worktop installation, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time. Range cookers in these houses sit in a masonry recess that is never square - template the two flanking tops individually with a tolerance gap, do not assume a symmetrical opening.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. 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.

The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Communal floors are protected the same as private ones. 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.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. There is usually a cellar head or a hatch somewhere in the floor, and whatever sits above it has to stay liftable. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Sink and hob seated and sealed before we go.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side.