Kitchen worktops in Gascoigne

Yes. A large regeneration area where older system-built blocks are being replaced by new flats and maisonettes, so the work splits between compact original flat kitchens getting a hard-wearing replacement top and newer units where owners upgrade the developer's finish. Kitchens are small and linear, one wall, sometimes with a short return, and no island anywhere. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. The longer the walk, the fewer the panels per trip.

1960s tower block, 1960s low-rise flat and 2010s-2020s regeneration housing. Concrete panel walls bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and the back edge is cut to follow it. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. The plaster behind it is the real question.

Flats above ground level throughout, so it is lifts, communal stairs, narrow landings and fire doors, with delivery times often restricted by the managing agent. A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. 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. Waste goes out the way the stone came in, so the route stays clear.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Specified for wear rather than for the photograph. Fire doors and 90-degree landings are the real limit on flat jobs here, so lengths are cut to what will physically turn on the landing.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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. Every internal corner is two pieces, not one. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A postformed top swallowed the fall. This will not. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

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. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Notice goes out before the crew is booked. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No payment is due before the template. The kitchen doorway is usually offset into a corner, so one leg of an L is short before anyone has designed anything. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The flatter the wall, the taller the stone.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Kitchens are compact and standardised, which makes the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines a larger share of the total than the stone. The rough band left where tiles took the plaster with them is covered by the upstand rather than made good twice. A bowed wall is what decides between an upstand and a panel.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Internal partitions are dense block finished in a hard sand and cement plaster, which is unforgiving to drill and unforgiving to make good. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Sockets cut in the shop, not on site.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Long walls break where the worktop breaks.