Kitchen worktops in Hampton Wick

Yes. Small Georgian and Victorian cottages in a compact village layout, with kitchens often only 2m to 2.6m of run and a doorway at each end, so the design is about tall storage and a single well-planned run rather than an island. 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. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Georgian cottage, Victorian terrace, Victorian villa and modern riverside flats. A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

The village sits at the foot of Kingston Bridge, so traffic queues through it most of the day, the streets are narrow with residents' bays, and many cottages open straight onto the pavement with no front garden to stage the load in. A front path with a gate and a turn or two adds handling before the door is even reached, and every handling movement is another chance to catch a corner. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The annexe top goes in on the same day. Doors opening straight onto the street mean the slab goes from tailgate to threshold in one move, so the van has to be right at the door or the job stalls.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The step between rooms is packed out first. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Repeat flats take the same replacement specification. 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.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Two lifts and a turn make it a four-man piece.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. A picture rail, a deep skirting and a moulded architrave all sit in the way of anything that assumes flat wall from floor to ceiling. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Suction pads will not hold on a wet or dusty face.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. 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. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.