Kitchen worktops in Dormers Wells

Yes. Interwar semis and estate houses with the kitchen extended into the garden. Practical family layouts with long back-wall runs and tall units, and storage prioritised over showpiece detail. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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.

Interwar semi, postwar estate house, 1960s maisonette and recent infill. An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. The old top hid it; the new one will not.

Residential streets with hardstanding on most frontages and easy on-street parking. The Uxbridge Road and Greenford Avenue are where the delays are. 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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. Rear extensions here are frequently built to the boundary on both sides, so measure the internal door widths carefully because there is no garden route as a fallback.

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. Breakfast bars get the steel they never had. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

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. Protection goes down first. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Where the external walls have been overboarded to insulate them the room is fifty millimetres smaller than the drawing and the board sounds hollow throughout. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. How old the kitchen is decides how long preparation takes.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Half a day of parking buys half a job.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. 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. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Rear access through a garden or a shared path means long pieces can usually come in whole from the back. Plaster bonded straight onto concrete comes away with the bottom course of tiles, leaving a band behind the upstand. Same units, straighter line, better surface.