Kitchen worktops in Gloucester Road

Yes. This is mansion flat territory - kitchens are original service rooms at the rear of the plan facing a light well, typically 2.6-3.2m of run in an L with a butler sink position that has never moved. Refurbishments knock the old maid's room into the kitchen to gain a peninsula, but the load-bearing spine wall usually stays, so the worktop wraps a doorway rather than crossing it. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the 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. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day.

red-brick and terracotta mansion block, stucco garden square terrace, hotel and serviced apartment conversion and 1930s purpose-built flats. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. This is the most managed day we do. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected.

Blocks here have a front porter's desk and a separate tradesman's entrance round the side, and materials go in the service lift only, with protective blankets on the walls. The lifts are old, often around 1000mm by 1300mm internally with a low car ceiling, which caps a stood-on-edge slab at roughly 2.2-2.4m unless the stairs are used instead. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The old top leaves by the route the new one arrives on.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A builder-finish kitchen upgrades in a morning. Old service lifts are the hard limit on this street - if the car will not take it, the joint gets designed around the lift, not around the kitchen.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A leaseholder still needs the building to consent. 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.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The alcove was never square and it still is not.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. The porter has to be booked, the goods lift protected with the block's own blankets or our own boards, and communal carpet and stair runners covered from the entrance to the flat door before a single piece moves. The tops go on level even when nothing else is.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A corner that will not close is never forced.