Kitchen worktops in Fortis Green

Yes. Mix of small Victorian cottages with 2.4m kitchens and interwar estate houses where the standard job is a modest rear extension producing an L-shape with a breakfast bar rather than a full island. Family kitchen-diners rather than showpieces. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

Victorian cottage, Edwardian semi and 1920s Coldfall estate house. Ceilings are high in these, so wall unit heights and splashback heights are open choices rather than things the room has already decided. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.

Fortis Green road itself is narrow with parking both sides and a constant flow of buses, so unloading is a two-minute job then move the van. The estate streets are flatter and easier than the rest of N10. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The void ends whether we have finished or not. The interwar estate houses have shallow 550mm base units in places - check the depth before ordering, a standard 620mm top leaves a bigger overhang than the client expects.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Joins move onto the gables this time round. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Water damage under a sink is the usual find.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.