Kitchen worktops in North Acton

Yes. Almost entirely new-build and student-scheme apartments with compact runs of 1.8m to 2.6m, everything integrated, no islands, and the client is usually an operator rather than a homeowner. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

2010s-2020s high-rise, purpose-built student block, build-to-rent tower and light industrial fringe. Every flat on the floor is the same plan handed left and right, so the room is predictable even where the building is not. The room itself is the easy part: walls are plumb, corners are square and the floor is flat, so scribes are minimal and joins can be tight. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

Tower blocks with booked service lifts, time-limited loading bays and security sign-in. Delivery comes off Victoria Road and the A40 without much difficulty. A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. 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. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top.

Worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear. In these towers the service lift car dimension sets the maximum piece size before the layout or the slab does, so measure the lift first.

It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

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. One visit where permission only stretches to one. 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.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Developer carcasses are thin cam-lock chipboard, which is entirely adequate under laminate and wants bracing before stone. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old top comes off in pieces, not whole.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The route is protected once and then used four times.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. The overhang is cut with its support already sized.