Kitchen worktops in Cyprus

Yes. Low-rise flats and small houses with kitchens of 2m to 2.6m along one wall, some opened into the living room with a short breakfast bar. There is a strong rental element, so specifications favour hard-wearing surfaces and simple square edges over elaborate detailing. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

1980s-90s low-rise estate, recent campus-adjacent apartment and small new-build terrace. An infill house is built to modern standards on an old plot, so the room is square even though the site around it is not. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Quiet residential roads with off-street bays and level thresholds, plus DLR viaducts that force a few detours but no serious restriction. Ground and first-floor flats dominate, so most work involves a short carry and a single flight at most. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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 replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year. Rental turnover drives the timing here, so jobs get booked around a tenancy change date and the template-to-fit gap has to be short.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there. 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.

Where the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall has to be ready. 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.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. 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. 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. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb.

Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Reordered next year, it will not match.