Kitchen worktops in Mill Hill East

Yes. Almost entirely new-build estate housing, so kitchens arrive as developer-standard open-plan layouts with a 3m run and an integrated appliance bank, and the work is upgrading tops and adding a matching upstand or splashback within the existing units. Townhouses put the kitchen on the ground floor with a small utility cupboard rather than a separate room. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

2010s-2020s new-build houses and apartments, converted barracks buildings and 1930s stock at the edges. Many have been extended at the rear since being sold, so the kitchen is half original and half newer with a floor junction between the two. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

New estate roads are wide and well surfaced with allocated parking, though visitor bays are scarce and some blocks have underfloor parking with height limits. Apartment deliveries need a lift booking with the managing agent. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. Developer units here are set out to the millimetre, so a template that respects the existing carcass line will beat one that measures off the plasterboard.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. Corners get their own pieces. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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 a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Sound carcasses are the condition. 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.