Kitchen worktops in Haydons Road

Yes. Dense small terraces where the kitchen occupies the original rear addition and measures barely 1.9m wide, so it is a true galley with units on one side only. A large share are split into upper and lower flats, and the upper flat kitchen is often a former bedroom with a boxed-in stack. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. The waste leaves with us, so the van has to still be there.

Victorian two-up two-down, Late Victorian terrace and Flat conversion. Winders at the head of each flight are the tightest part of the climb and they are appreciably tighter than the straight run below them. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.

Houses front directly onto the pavement with no forecourt, the streets are permit-controlled and narrow, and the railway line limits through routes so vans have to approach from the right end. Internal halls are around 850mm with a sharp turn at the foot of the stairs. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Full height behind the hob is less for a tenant to scrub. With no forecourt there is nowhere to set a slab down between van and door, so anything wider than the hall has to be carried in one continuous move, plan the pair and the route before unloading.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The sink is chosen before the cut list is set. 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. 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. Scribed along the top edge as well. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Low maintenance is the honest choice for a let. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Ceilings in the principal rooms are three metres or more, so a full-height panel behind a hob is a taller piece here than the same kitchen would need anywhere else. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Joins move onto the gables this time round.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. Each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped, because nothing in the room is straight enough to drop into. Tile beds and adhesive come off before the new top goes on.