Kitchen worktops in Bruce Grove

Yes. Large Victorian houses that were built for single families and are now mostly split into flats, so kitchens end up in odd places - a former front parlour, a half-landing return room, or a back addition. Run lengths vary wildly between 1.8m and 3.5m in the same street. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. 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. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear.

Victorian terrace, Victorian villa conversion and flat above shop. Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. What is under the old top is the real question.

The High Road end has heavy bus traffic, market activity and loading restrictions, and the side streets are permit-controlled. Converted houses have a communal front door, a shared hall with buggies and bikes in it, and a stair with a tight quarter-turn. A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. 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. Because these are conversions, the kitchen is often above someone else's living room - drop cloths and a no-cutting-inside rule are worth agreeing with the freeholder up front.

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. 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. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single 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. 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. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. 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 walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. 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. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old top comes off in pieces, not whole.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Laminate hides a level that stone will not.