Kitchen worktops in Parsloes

Yes. Estate housing around Parsloes Park with a high proportion of terraced house types and a fair amount of rented stock, so the standard job is a hard-wearing replacement top on existing units with a robust sink and a full set of upstands. Where owners are improving properly, the dining room wall comes out and the run extends to about 3m with a small peninsula. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is.

1920s-1930s LCC cottage estate house, ex-council terrace and post-war flat. The chimney breast in the kitchen served a back boiler behind the living room fire, so the flue is a shared one and the breast is deeper than a fireplace would need. 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. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.

Consistent estate street layout with front gardens, hardstanding on some houses and rear service paths between the terraces, all with easy parking. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear. Rental jobs here want durability over looks, so we push a thicker profile and a fully sealed sink cut-out rather than a delicate edge detail.

A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. 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. The seam sits in shadow or it sits in a corner. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The whole slot, or the stone waits. 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 design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Meters were moved out to a box on the flank wall on a later programme, and the cupboard they came out of is usually still standing in the corner. Plaster bonded straight onto concrete comes away with the bottom course of tiles, leaving a band behind the upstand. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. A galley shows both walls at the same time.