Kitchen worktops in Nunhead

Yes. Smaller artisan Victorian terraces where the original kitchen is a cramped closet wing - the standard upgrade is a modest rear extension giving a straight 3m run plus a 1.2m return, with a peninsula instead of an island because the room is not wide enough for both. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

Victorian two-up two-down, Victorian terrace, 1950s council rebuild and interwar semi. The rear room has a bay or a wide window onto the garden, so the sink length is short and the real working length is on the return. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork.

Steeply graded streets running up towards the cemetery, narrow carriageways with parking both sides, and a lot of houses with a side alley too narrow for a slab trolley, so it is a front-door carry. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. One flat out of use at a time. Rooms here are frequently under 2.4m wide, so the client has to be talked out of an island early or the walkways end up under 900mm.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. 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 the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. One day out of use, agreed in advance. 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.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Found at template, not on fit day.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. The external wall on the passage side has never been rendered, so it is cold, solid and honest to fix into. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Suspended timber floors flex underfoot, and anything that moves beneath a unit shows up later as a lipped join. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. A settled floor adds an hour and the day allows for it.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.