Kitchen worktops in Mildmay

Yes. Uniform Victorian terraces mostly divided into flats, so the recurring job is a rear-addition kitchen of about 3m in an L with the sink under a window onto a shared garden. Whole-house owners tend to build a small rear infill rather than a full side return, because the plots are narrow. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, conversion flat and post-war infill. The stairs come down against the wall the addition opens off, so the doorway into the kitchen is offset and the corner beside it is taken by the cupboard under the flight. 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. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

A filtered-street scheme closes several through routes so the approach has to be planned street by street, and parking is permit-only Monday to Friday and tight all day. The terraces are shallow-set with two or three front steps and a hall under a metre wide. A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house. Narrow rear additions here often will not take a 600mm run plus a walkway, so check clearances at template and be ready to advise a 560mm depth instead.

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. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The addition is a brick narrower than the house it hangs off, which leaves a stub of the original rear wall standing square to the run at the doorway end. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The old top hid it; the new one will not.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The hall is the only way in and out for whoever lives there, so it is cleared and then kept clear for as long as pieces are moving. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. What changes is the surface. The carcasses underneath stay where they are. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised.