Kitchen worktops in Caledonian Road

Yes. A long spine of above-shop flats with side streets of Victorian terraces and big estates behind, so kitchens are small, fixed and quite often internal with no window at all. The newer canal-side flats are the exception, with open-plan runs of about 3m and a short island. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Victorian terrace, large post-war estate, canal-side new build and above-shop flat. The stair from the street is narrow with a tight turn at the top, which caps piece length well below anything the run itself needs. The units are often 1970s or 80s and only around 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors and drawer fronts need checking against it. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

The road itself is narrow with bus lanes and peak-hour loading bans, and the estates behind have gated courtyards. Above-shop access is a single street door and a steep straight stair with no landing at the top to turn on. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Internal kitchens with no window make dust control and extraction difficult, so cut off site wherever possible and bring the pieces in finished.

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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The join is the last thing finished. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the laser plots the intermediate points. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Eased in, never forced. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Sound carcasses are the condition. 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.