Kitchen worktops in Castle Green

Yes. Housing squeezed between the A13 and the Becontree layout, mostly inter-war and post-war family homes with small original kitchens, plus newer regeneration housing coming forward. The typical job is combining kitchen and dining room and running a continuous top across the old wall line so the space reads as one room. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed.

1930s Becontree-era house, post-war housing and regeneration new-build. Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not.

Reasonable residential streets but bounded by major roads, so route planning matters more than parking; most houses have some frontage to pull onto. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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 fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The building keeps working around us. When we run a top across a removed wall line the two floor levels rarely match, so the base units get levelled to a datum line, not to the floor.

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. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The whole slot, or the stone waits. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. 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. Internal walls are hollow clay block or stud rather than solid brick, so two points a metre apart on the same wall want two different fixings. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. 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. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A serving hatch through to the dining room is common, and closing one up leaves a panel of newer wall exactly where the run passes. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The old top is heavy waste, and booked as waste.

Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. It sets the crew: two fitters where the route is straightforward, four where it is not. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out.