Kitchen worktops in Myatt's Fields

Yes. Victorian terraces around the park have narrow rear additions where the kitchen stays a galley of about 2m wide, with the option of opening into the rear reception to gain a return. Rebuilt estate housing nearby has contemporary kitchens sized to modern regulations with an island only in the larger family units. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. That is why they are crated the way they are.

Victorian terrace, Rebuilt estate housing and Interwar block. 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. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. What is under the old top is the real question.

Streets around the park are quiet but tightly parked and permit-controlled, and several are one-way, so the approach matters. Terraced front doors are close to the pavement with a short path and a step up. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. In the narrow rear additions there is not enough width to swing a 600mm top into place flat, so it comes in on edge and gets lowered between the wall and the units.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Plotted, not estimated. 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. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.