Kitchen worktops in Headstone

Yes. Solid interwar family stock around the recreation ground and manor, with kitchens usually enlarged by taking in the old larder and a small rear addition rather than a full extension. Typical result is a U-shape of about 3m, 2.4m and 1.5m with a peninsula at the dining end. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days.

1930s semi, 1920s cottage-style house and 1960s purpose-built flat. The gas meter box is fixed to the flank wall beside the alley and stands proud enough to matter when a long piece is coming past it on edge. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. The shell has the last word on fitting day.

Wide verged residential roads with driveways, and a fair number of houses with a genuine side passage of 900mm or more that takes a slab on edge comfortably. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like.

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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Nothing else in the room has to change. U-shaped kitchens need three templated pieces meeting at two internal corners, and those corners want mitred joints rather than butts if the veining is directional.

With three walls in play the chance of one of them being out of square is high, and the template has to carry all three angles. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances. 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.

Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The gap between tenancies is the whole window. 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.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. The advantage of a U is that every join can be put over a gable in a corner, so nothing lands in the middle of a clear length. 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 seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Ceilings run to about two point four metres, so wall units, a splashback and an extractor are all competing for the same short band of wall. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.