Kitchen worktops in Putney

Yes. Mansion flats and purpose-built blocks near the river hold the bulk of the work, with kitchens confined to their original footprint, a run of 2.6m to 3.2m and a return, sometimes opened to the reception with a peninsula in the opening. Terraced houses on the streets off the Upper Richmond Road take a conventional rear extension. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. A skip on the frontage takes the space the van needed.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian mansion flat, 1930s purpose-built flat and Riverside apartment. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. A mansion block is a logistics job before it is a stone job. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.

The High Street is a red route with a bus gate and no stopping, and the surrounding streets are permit-controlled. Mansion blocks frequently have a small original lift that will not take a slab, meaning a stair carry up two or three flights with a half-landing turn each time. A handrail that has to come off before a piece will pass is twenty minutes at the start of the day, and it goes back on the wall before we leave. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. Assume the lift is unusable in the older blocks and plan piece sizes around the stair turn, a 2.4m maximum is a safer starting point than the room dimensions suggest.

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 existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The strip-out is the part worth planning. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it. 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.

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. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. A full stone piece is several times the weight of the laminate coming out, and there is rarely room to turn it on a half-landing. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. 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. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The communal stair is stone with a cast iron balustrade, and the winders leave very little room to turn a long piece. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Laminate hides a level that stone will not.