Kitchen worktops in Ponders End

Yes. Two very different jobs in the same postcode - old terraces with a 2.4m kitchen at the back, and new apartments where the developer fitted a compact U with a breakfast bar and the owner wants the laminate swapped for quartz within a year of moving in. New-build runs are short but need exact cut-outs for the supplied undermount sink. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Victorian terrace, post-war council block and 2010s Meridian Water apartment. The rear extension is frequently original rather than added, which means it is solidly built and just as far out of square as the rest of the house. The day is planned backwards from the hall, and the scribing takes longer than the carry. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

The new blocks want a booked loading bay and a goods lift slot, usually two-hour windows, with a concierge signing you in. The older terraces off the High Street have no off-street parking at all. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating, in that order. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. In the new flats the developer carcasses are 18mm and lightly fixed - brace them before dropping 20mm quartz on a peninsula overhang.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. One datum for the whole room. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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.

These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Units kept, surface changed. 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.