Kitchen worktops in Hillingdon Heath

Yes. Modest postwar kitchens, usually a U-shape with the old pantry cupboard taken out, worktop runs of 2.4m to 3m and the sink positioned under a window looking into the back garden. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

Postwar estate house, 1950s semi and ex-local terrace. The kitchen has a door to the hall, a door to the garden and a window over the sink, so the continuous run is short in every direction. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since.

Along the Uxbridge Road and Long Lane corridor. On-street parking is generally free and unrestricted and most front gardens have been paved into hardstanding. Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. 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. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing. The sink-under-window arrangement means scribing into a plastered reveal on both sides, which is the fiddliest cut on an otherwise simple job.

The short run at the head of a U usually sits under a window, so that piece is scribed on three sides at once and has nowhere left to be pushed back to. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need. 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.

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 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Fitted with the tops if it was decided with them. 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.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Built-in stores and a fuel place beside the back door were standard, and one of them is usually still sitting in the corner of the kitchen. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. 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. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A U puts the sink in one leg, the hob in another and any drainer grooves in whatever is left, which spreads the cut-outs about but does not reduce the machining time. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone.