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. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. Walls are dense block or in-situ concrete with a bonded plaster, so the bottom course of tiles brings plaster with it when the old top comes off. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

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. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Same batch, same run, same day. The sink-under-window arrangement means scribing into a plastered reveal on both sides, which is the fiddliest cut on an otherwise simple job.

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. Dry-lay first, always. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Same slab run as the tops. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.