Kitchen worktops in Brixton Hill

Yes. The big villas climbing the hill have been split into flats, and the kitchen usually lands in a former bedroom or rear reception with a run down one wall and a peninsula where a fireplace was blocked up. Whole terraces lower down take a rear extension with an L and a small island. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

Victorian terrace, Large Victorian villa converted to flats, 1930s purpose-built block and Postwar estate. The party wall is the straightest surface in the house and everything else has moved away from it over a century. 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. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

The hill itself is the constraint, steep front paths, steps up to raised ground floors and long staircases inside converted houses. Permit parking applies and the main road has bus lanes, so the van usually sits on a side street with a climb to the door. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. Kitchens in converted villas sit on suspended timber floors that flex under a stone island, so check for a supporting wall or add noggins before committing to anything freestanding.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.