Kitchen worktops in Marks Gate

Yes. A compact post-war estate cut off north of the A12, built to a small number of types, so kitchens are uniformly small, a single 2.4m run with the boiler above and no realistic room for an island or peninsula unless a wall comes out. Most work is replacement tops and sinks on sound units, with occasional full refits where a rear extension has been added. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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 day is built around that window.

1950s LCC estate house, post-war maisonette and 1960s low-rise flat. Ceilings sit at about two point three metres and the head of the window is close under them, so a unit over the window has very little wall to hold onto. The carry is the constraint. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Self-contained estate with parking courts, garage blocks and pedestrian paths between the blocks; the A12 means there is one way in and out, so timing around traffic matters. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn. The estate is small and repetitive, so once we have templated one of each house type we know the room, but every single one still gets checked for the boiler position.

A tall bank of housings at one end takes a chunk out of the working run, so the usable length of that side is always less than the length of the wall behind it. 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. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Nothing bears on plasterboard. 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.

One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A passive vent or a ducted extract shaft takes a corner of the kitchen from floor to ceiling and cannot be reduced. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Packers under the carcass, not shims under the stone.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. The gas enters at the back of the house and the pipe to the hob crosses the room at low level in a boxing along the skirting. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. The house sets the order of work.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Windows sit in deep concrete reveals with a cast sill, and that reveal is usually the least square thing in the room. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. One visit, our own installers.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.