Kitchen worktops in Earlsfield

Yes. Two-storey terraces where the standard project is filling the side return to give a kitchen about 3.5m wide, with cabinets along the flank and a narrow 1.6m to 2m island or a peninsula. Houses on the smaller streets stay galley-only because the return is too shallow to gain useful width. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace and Purpose-built 1930s flat. Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. What the building will take decides how it is fixed.

Streets are permit-controlled with narrow carriageways, and the railway embankment and Garratt Lane traffic limit approach routes. Front gardens are shallow, so there is barely a metre to stage a slab before the door. An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. 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. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Rooms in a shared house are let individually, so the work has to be done around whoever is still living in the building. 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. Side-return roofs here often bring a downpipe or a boiler flue through the new flank wall, so the run gets a notch or a shortened piece that has to be picked up at template, not at fit.

The step or level change between the original room and the return is real, and the units need packing before stone goes across it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. 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 replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Replacement suits occupied stock better than a strip-out. 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.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.

Nothing is payable in advance of the template. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The join is polished flat before we call it done.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Rooflights along a side return mean the worktop is lit from directly above all day, which shows every ripple in a surface and every gap at a scribe. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Bi-fold or sliding doors at the end of the return mean the run finishes against a frame rather than a wall, and a frame gives nothing to scribe into and no movement to take up. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. One datum for every run in the room.