Kitchen worktops in Friday Hill

Yes. Estate-built semis and maisonettes with kitchens of about 2.2m to 2.6m, generally still separate, with a pantry cupboard and a back door in the run. Most work is a straight replacement of an ageing laminate rather than a reconfiguration. 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. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

post-war council-built estate housing, 1950s semi and low-rise maisonette block. A maisonette puts the kitchen on one of two levels, so an internal staircase may be part of the route as well as the communal one. The carry is the constraint. Carried once, and carried properly.

Estate roads are wide with communal parking and grass verges, and many houses retain a side gate, so the physical access is easy. Maisonette blocks have an external stair to the upper unit and no lift, meaning first-floor kitchens are a stair carry. Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Grout lines are the first thing to fail in a let. Upper maisonettes are an external stair carry with an outside turn at the top, so wet weather changes the plan more than the dimensions do.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Clamps close the joint, colour match settles it. 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. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. The obstruction sets the joint, not the wall. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

Method statements, insurance certificates and named operatives are wanted before a crew is cleared to attend, all of which is routine when it is asked for a week out. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Two attendances need two people to be in. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. A fob on the communal door and a shared lift mean the carry is timed rather than continuous. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Nothing is cut in the room if the shop could do it.

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. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. One trip is always better than three.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down.