Kitchen worktops in Manor Park

Yes. Long rear gardens mean a lot of houses have added a full-width single-storey extension, so the kitchen sits at the back of a 6m deep room with a 3.5m run against the flank wall and a peninsula defining the dining space. A significant proportion of the stock is split into flats where the kitchen is a converted rear bedroom. A van waiting on a loading concession has somebody standing with it, because a vehicle left unattended is the one that collects the ticket. 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. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan.

Edwardian terrace, converted terrace flat and interwar semi. The partitions put in at conversion are studwork standing on the old floor, so they take a fixing well but carry nothing, and a heavy end panel needs a different answer. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.

Terraced streets with permit bays and a lot of parked cars, plus a level crossing and rail bridges that restrict which end of some streets you can enter from. Converted upper flats have a shared hall, a straight stair and a landing that will not take a full-length piece around the corner. Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. In the converted flats the kitchen was never designed as one, so services run in surface trunking and the top needs notching rather than a clean scribe.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The managing agent books the lift, not the household. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The units are relevelled before anything new is bedded.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. Old top out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon, with a plumber either side of us. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.