Kitchen worktops in Clay Hill

Yes. Mixed semi-rural stock along the lanes towards Hilly Fields - period cottages with tight kitchens next door to large detached houses with full open-plan rear rooms. Boot rooms and second sinks for dogs and horses come up more here than anywhere else in the borough. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Access out counts as much as access in.

Victorian cottage, 1930s detached and stable and paddock conversion. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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.

Single-track sections with high hedges and blind bends, plus a steep pull up towards the ridge. Most properties have their own parking but the approach is the issue, not the property. 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. 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.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. An annexe kitchen is often built to keep a parent independent, so worktop height and reach matter as much as the material does. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. Utility and boot-room tops here take a beating from wet kit and mud, so push clients towards a full-bodied sintered surface rather than a light polished quartz.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The strip-out is the part worth planning. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again. 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.

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. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. 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. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. Each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped, because nothing in the room is straight enough to drop into. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.