Kitchen worktops in Mortlake

Yes. Modest Victorian and Edwardian terraces near the river with rear kitchens of 2.4m by 3.5m and a common single-storey infill, plus a growing stock of new apartments on the old brewery site with developer-fitted kitchens along one wall and a short island. 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. 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. We would rather ask than guess.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, 1930s flats and 2020s brewery site redevelopment. The rear extension is frequently original rather than added, which means it is solidly built and just as far out of square as the rest of the house. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork.

The level crossing on the main road stops traffic repeatedly and the riverside streets are narrow with parking both sides; the new development has controlled access, allocated bays and lifts with booking sheets. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The crew size follows from it.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets move on site far more often than plans do. New-build kitchens on the redevelopment come with thin composite tops that clients upgrade early, so it is usually a swap onto existing carcasses with the sink and tap reused.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Access is checked against the longest piece first. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. Nothing gets hidden behind a full-height panel. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Deferred is workable; undecided is not. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Where the wall cannot be made good, setting the stone deliberately proud on a subframe with a shadow gap reads as a detail rather than a bad fit. The reveal decides where the stone dies.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Wider halls make the carry noticeably easier, and that alone can remove a join that a narrower terrace would have forced into the run. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Overhangs get brackets before anyone leans on them.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Ceilings are generous and the rooms are narrow, so the runs are long, the aisle is tight and there is nowhere to stand a slab on edge. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. A settled floor adds an hour and the day allows for it.