Kitchen worktops in Hayes

Yes. Mostly private inter-war and post-war detached with square kitchens rather than long thin ones, so the layout is usually three walls of units with a table in the middle, and clients converting to an island for the first time. Chalet bungalows near the common often have a low-ceilinged kitchen with a rear door that has to stay in place. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

1930s detached, 1950s detached, 1960s chalet bungalow and post-war semi. Ceiling heights dropped after the war, so there is less wall between the worktop and the wall units than in anything older. The units are often 1970s or 80s and only around 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors and drawer fronts need checking against it. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

Straightforward for the most part: driveways, dropped kerbs and side gates wide enough to take a slab round the back without going through the house. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. The square rooms here mean four separate pieces with three joints, so joint placement away from the hob cut-out matters more than in a galley.

The two returns in a U are close to the same size and it is tempting to nest them side by side, except that the veining then mirrors across the room and reads as deliberate for the wrong reason. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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. Keys confirmed the week before, not the morning of. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. 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. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Plaster over blockwork is thin and hollow in patches, so anything fixed back to the wall needs a sound spot found first. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The units are relevelled before anything new is bedded.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Three runs is three scribes and three separate lifts, so a U takes longer on site than its metreage suggests even on a day when nothing goes wrong. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.