Kitchen worktops in Brentham Garden Suburb

Yes. Small original kitchens in Arts and Crafts cottages with limited permitted development, so the work is making a compact 2.5m to 3.5m kitchen function properly. Honed finishes and simple square edges suit the houses. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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. We would rather start at seven than argue with a warden.

Edwardian Arts and Crafts cottage, garden suburb terrace and 1900s-1910s cooperative housing. Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork.

Conservation area with narrow lanes, greens and hedged frontages, few driveways, and controls on skips and scaffolding that need arranging well ahead. 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. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. Suction lifters take a panel where hands cannot get a grip.

Worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Cut as a set, so one can replace another. The conservation controls mean the kitchen stays exactly where it is, so this is a fitting and scribing problem rather than a design one.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. Set it proud on a subframe and the gap becomes deliberate. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Agreed with whoever is paying for both. 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.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The staircase rises over the back room in a good number of these, so a sloping bulkhead sits over one end of the run and a piece cannot be stood on edge beneath 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. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. A booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive.