Kitchen worktops in Honor Oak Park

Yes. Terraces stepped up a hill, so plenty of houses have a half-landing kitchen or a rear room sitting well above the garden with steps down. Extensions here often need a raised deck, and the run tends to be an L following the original chimney breast. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this one. 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.

late Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, 1930s semi and postwar low-rise flats. These are built in dense concrete, so support for a peninsula or an end panel goes in with proper anchors rather than plugs. 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. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.

Steep gradients away from the station, on-street permit parking, and front gardens given over to bins rather than drives; the uphill roads are hard work for a two-man carry. 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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. Split-level rear rooms are the recurring issue, confirm which floor level the units actually sit on before templating.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A run that flexed under laminate gets support now. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The slot belongs to whoever can open the door. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Where the kitchen is on the entrance level, the piece comes off the deck and turns straight in without going up or down at all. 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. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.