Kitchen worktops in Canons Park

Yes. Well-proportioned interwar houses laid out around the park with kitchens usually extended once, giving a 3.6m run plus a modest island, alongside 1930s low-rise flat blocks with original small kitchens that are being modernised without moving the plumbing. Utility rooms appear in the houses, never in the flats. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. A long carry turns a light piece into an awkward one.

1930s semi and detached, 1930s purpose-built flat block and post-war infill. The original fitted dresser and the vent to outside air have often left their openings behind the units, unfilled and unrecorded. This is the most managed day we do. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

Wide roads with verges and drives on the houses, and the flat blocks have generous communal entrances but low-headroom stairwells that decide how a slab is turned. A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. That family has lived on a building site long enough. In the 1930s blocks the kitchen window sits low and the original tiled splashback is bedded thick, so allow for hacking off before the upstand can sit flush.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Any overhang gets underpinned first. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A day out of use, told to whoever lives there. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.

The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Where the drive is shared, the half-hour the van spends in the way is agreed with the neighbour in advance rather than apologised for at the time. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Panels come across in one pass with the route already cleared.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Floors are concrete with a screed and a thin finish, so there is no give anywhere and packing the carcasses is the only way to get a plane. The porter has to be booked, the goods lift protected with the block's own blankets or our own boards, and communal carpet and stair runners covered from the entrance to the flat door before a single piece moves. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top.