Kitchen worktops in Globe Town

Yes. A lot of estate flats here still have the original compact kitchen off the hall, typically two short runs of 1.8m to 2.2m with a boxed-in soil stack in one corner. Owners tend to replace like for like rather than knock through, so it is small-piece work with a lot of cut-outs around existing services. 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.

1930s LCC walk-up flat, 1960s Lubetkin-era estate block and Victorian terrace. Front doors off the deck open into a lobby barely wider than the door itself, and the turn out of it is a right angle. The carry is the constraint. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

Balcony-access blocks mean carrying stone along an open deck and through a 760mm front door, and the older walk-ups have no goods lift at all. Street parking is CPZ-controlled and the estate roads have height barriers on the parking courts, so the van usually sits on the main road and the slab is carried in. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Deck-access flats are a two-man carry every time, so pieces get sized to what will physically turn into the door rather than what looks best on paper.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. 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 seam sits in shadow or it sits in a corner. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. 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. Height follows the sill, not the plan. 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.

Access is arranged through a managing agent or a scheme office rather than with the household directly, so a date gets confirmed once in writing and moving it costs a fortnight. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable. 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.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Dense concrete and blockwork mean the wall cannot be chased back or packed out, so the stone carries the scribe. 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.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Where the household has used up the visitor permits it gets for the year, the remaining options are a suspension or a paid bay and both belong on the quote. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Four hands or eight is settled before the tail lift drops.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.