Kitchen worktops in Harrow Road

Yes. Mostly estate flats and maisonettes with small purpose-built kitchens - a 2.1m to 2.6m run, a return under the window, and no dishwasher space unless a unit comes out. Refits are usually driven by a landlord programme, so the spec is standardised across several flats at once. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

post-war council block, 1970s low-rise estate, Victorian terrace and flat above shop. 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. The shell has the last word on fitting day.

Estates along the road use deck walkways, communal fob doors and lifts with a small car, and the road itself has bus lanes and few loading opportunities. Bin stores and bike racks routinely block the shortest route to the block entrance. Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops it. 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. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget. Batch refits mean repeated identical layouts, so it is worth templating two or three flats in one visit - just check each one, the concrete openings vary by 10-20mm between units.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

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. Repeat flats take the same replacement specification. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The original plan had one sink position, and moving it means taking a waste through a wall that does not want to be cut. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. A settled floor adds an hour and the day allows for it.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Out and in happen along the same protected route.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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 galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. The old tops leave by the same route, so the carry out and the skip or van are planned alongside the carry in. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery.