Kitchen worktops in Forty Hill

Yes. Conservation village around Forty Hall with a lot of listed and locally listed cottages. Kitchens are small, ceilings are low, and the look is unfitted - a freestanding table, a run of 2.4m under the window, and a butler sink. Islands almost never fit. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Wind on an open street matters more than the walk does.

Georgian cottage, listed brick house and Victorian estate cottage. Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. A 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer where the plaster bows, because it rides what a tall panel exposes. Solid plaster on brick takes a panel; a hollow wall wants thought.

Narrow lanes with soft verges and no parking bays, and several properties are behind a walled front with a gate under 900mm. Listed status means no wheeling a trolley over historic paving without protection down. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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 and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The void ends whether we have finished or not. In listed cottages you cannot chase the wall for an upstand, so the stone has to be scribed to a lumpy lime-plastered surface and sealed rather than let in.

Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. The run decides where that joint falls. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access confirmed rather than assumed. 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.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Standing a panel on the pavement is the last resort.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Old walls take a scribed upstand better than a rigid panel.