Kitchen worktops in Lamorbey

Yes. Interwar housing around the park with rear kitchens and separate dining rooms; many have a side extension over the old garage, which gives a wide kitchen with an L and a small island rather than one long run. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1930s semi, interwar detached, 1960s low-rise flats and postwar terrace. The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Quiet roads with verges and drives, good turning space throughout, and school traffic around the park as the only timing issue. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. Out and in happen along the same protected route.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. 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 void week is the entire schedule. Side-extension kitchens mean the run crosses an old external wall, expect a step in the wall line and template for it.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The return is offered up last. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Whoever owns the carcasses owns that call. 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.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Same footprint, different tolerances.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. 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. A laminate top was scribed thin at the back to swallow it, and stone cannot be shaved down the same way. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us.