Kitchen worktops in Forest Gate

Yes. This is side-return territory: the wider Victorian houses get the side return infilled and the kitchen becomes a bright room with a 3.5m run under a rooflight plus a 2m island with a hob and downdraught. Specifications skew towards larger islands and matching upstands because the room is on show from the garden. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

Victorian villa, conservation-area terrace, Edwardian terrace and small new-build block. Where the addition is single storey the ceiling follows a lean-to roof, so one side of the room loses height and a full-height panel has a sloping stop. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

Parts of the area are a conservation area with restrictions on street frontage alterations, and the residential roads are permit-controlled with modal filters on some crossings that force a specific approach. Most houses have a side alley, but conservation-area boundary walls often make it too tight to pass an island slab, so it goes through the house. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it.

Worktop installation, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. Side-return kitchens have one wall that is brand new and one that is 120 years old, and the old one is never straight over a 3.5m run.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked with whoever actually holds the keys. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Old plaster gets scribed to, never fought with.