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. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

Victorian terrace, Large Victorian villa converted to flats, 1930s purpose-built block and Postwar estate. The rear room is generous with a chimney breast in one corner, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends whatever the plan drew. The day is planned backwards from the hall. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

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 short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A deposit deduction rarely covers a new top. 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.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not. 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.

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. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Nothing to reseal is the point in a let. 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.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Chimney breasts and the alcoves either side of them break the run into short pieces before anyone has drawn a kitchen. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The alcove was never square and it still is not.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. Every unit gets a level on it before a piece lands.