Kitchen worktops in Hook

Yes. Postwar and interwar semis with compact kitchens of around 2.4m by 3m, frequently extended over the side alley or opened into the dining room to make a straight 3.6m run with the sink under the original window and a small breakfast bar at the far 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. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

1930s semi, 1950s council-built semi, 1960s terrace and modern infill. Rear access through a garden or a shared path means long pieces can usually come in whole from the back. The carry is the constraint. The age of the house sets the pace of it.

Quiet estate roads off the Hook Rise corridor with driveways and garages, and enough width to turn a van; the main hold-up is the A3 junction traffic rather than anything on site. 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. 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. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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 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. Ex-council houses here often have out-of-level solid floors, so the base units need shimming across the run before a stone top will sit without rocking.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. A straight swap is the exception in an older room. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sequenced around access rather than around the workshop. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. 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 corner that will not close is never forced.

Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Windows sit in deep concrete reveals with a cast sill, and that reveal is usually the least square thing in the room. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Door fronts and stone edges get checked against each other first.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project.