Kitchen worktops in Custom House

Yes. Older terraces and council houses have small rear kitchens of around 2.2m to 2.6m with a pantry recess and a back door in the run. New replacement blocks have single-wall open-plan kitchens, so the work is either a small traditional refit or a like-for-like swap in a modern flat. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. Van to door is the distance that matters.

interwar terrace, post-war council housing and recent regeneration apartment. The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

Ongoing regeneration means hoardings, closed roads and diverted footways that change month to month, so the route needs checking on the day rather than from a map. Where houses survive there is decent kerb space and level front access, which makes those the straightforward jobs. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. One plot replaced years on, matched or otherwise. Site hoardings regularly block the road you templated from, so leave a bit of slack in the delivery window for a diverted approach.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A leaseholder still needs the building to consent. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The plaster is a thick float and set over brick that has blown in patches, so a wall sounds solid in one place and hollow a hand-span away. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Levelled under the units first.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone.

Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. 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. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. It sets what the day actually looks like.