Kitchen worktops in Brentford

Yes. Two completely different jobs in one place: narrow galleys of 2.4m to 3m in the old terraces off the High Street, and open-plan apartment kitchens in the new riverside blocks with peninsulas and waterfall ends specified by the developer. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

Victorian terrace, canalside wharf conversion, 1960s block and 2020s riverside apartment. Many of these kitchens are a fitted pod dropped into open floor, so three sides are free and only the fourth is ever scribed. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are. The age of the house sets the pace of it.

The High Street one-way system and the Great West Road make the approach straightforward, but the riverside blocks need goods-lift booking and long trolley routes up from an underground car park. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

Worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Reordered next year, it will not match. Apartment specs here routinely ask for matching window boards and upstands from the same slab, so measure the sill runs at template or you are back for a second visit.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The old cut-outs prove nothing. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Where the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. An owner can wait for it; a void period cannot. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Exposed brick and steel is the whole job here, because neither of them presents a flat plane to scribe to. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The wall decides, not the brochure.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. Two loads, one space, one day.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Open plan means long uninterrupted runs and an island in the middle of the room with every edge on show. Socket positions, sill heights and wall flatness are the three things that settle this, and all three are properties of the building. Siliconed to the top, never grouted.