Kitchen worktops in Plashet

Yes. The larger houses on the park side have generous rear kitchens of 3m to 3.5m with a separate utility in the old scullery, and the smaller terraces keep a conventional galley. A lot of homes here run big weekly cooking loads, so a durable surface and a deep sink matter more than a delicate finish. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

Edwardian terrace, large bay-fronted Victorian house and converted flat. Ceilings in the principal rooms are three metres or more, so a full-height panel behind a hob is a taller piece here than the same kitchen would need anywhere else. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.

Streets are permit-controlled with heavy residential parking pressure, and the school run times create genuine congestion on the through roads, so a mid-morning slot is best. Front paths are short and level, hallways are wide enough on the larger houses to bring in a 3m piece on edge. Two people will walk a two-metre piece in through a front door; the same hall with a three-metre piece wants four, purely because nobody can let go halfway. 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. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Nothing else in the room has to change. Utility rooms carved out of old sculleries usually need a second smaller top, and it is worth cutting it from the same slab for a match.

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. The join is the last thing finished. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The gap between tenancies is the whole window. 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.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Support first, stone second.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. 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. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The laying order follows the shape.