Kitchen worktops in Little Ilford

Yes. Kitchens are typically a self-contained rear room of about 2.6m by 2.4m, still used as a separate kitchen rather than opened up, with an L layout and the back door in the corner. Refits here are usually a straight replacement of a tired laminate with a hardwearing quartz. 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. 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 run is planned, not improvised.

interwar terrace, 1930s semi and post-war maisonette. The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. What is under the old top is the real question.

Roads are wider than the Victorian streets to the south with a mix of driveways and unrestricted stretches, so parking outside the property is realistic. Interior access is straightforward with a hallway leading directly to the rear, though door widths of 760mm still limit anything carried flat. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. Standard-sized rear kitchens repeat street after street, so the fit is quick, but the back doors are almost always in the corner and force an angled end cut.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. The joint to the worktop is siliconed, never grouted. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. 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.

Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed. 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.