Kitchen worktops in Bowes Park

Yes. Tight grid of Victorian terraces where most houses have been split into a ground-floor and a first-floor flat. Ground-floor flats get the back addition kitchen with a side-return infill if the owner has money; upper flats have the kitchen wedged into a back bedroom with a 2.2m run and a boiler cupboard. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. A suspension for the full day beats half a day lost.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace and flat conversion. Original quarry tiles survive under a later vinyl in many of these, and lifting the units off them shows how far the floor has fallen towards the garden end. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The building has kept moving; the new template catches up.

No front gardens to speak of and doors almost straight off the pavement, permit parking all day, and the railway cuts several streets so you cannot always drive round the block. Upper conversions have no lift and a narrow original staircase. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. Upper-floor conversions above 2.4m of straight run need the top jointed at the stair - carry the pieces separately and joint in the room.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Sealant seals. It does not fit. 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.

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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A rolling programme loses a flat to one missing key. 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 groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where the walls have been dry-lined over the old lath there is a void behind the board and no solid fixing until a batten is found. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Twenty years of settlement is measured, not argued with.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The outrigger shares a party wall with the addition next door for its whole length, so one long side of the kitchen is solid brick with another kitchen on the far side of it. 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. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. 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. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now.