Kitchen worktops in Ravensbury

Yes. Older estate maisonettes have kitchens on the entrance level with the living space above or behind, which keeps runs short and rules out islands entirely. Newer regeneration blocks alongside the Wandle come with modern carcasses at standard heights, so a stone swap is a clean like-for-like. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Nothing goes out until the route back to the van is clear.

Postwar estate housing, Interwar semi and 2010s regeneration block. Where the kitchen is on the entrance level, the piece comes off the deck and turns straight in without going up or down at all. 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. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

The Wandle and its parkland cut the area into pockets, so the drivable route to a front door is often not the obvious one on a map. Newer blocks have proper lobbies and lifts; the older maisonettes have external stair access only. A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer. Maisonette kitchens usually back onto a shared party wall with a soil stack boxed in, and that boxing eats 150mm of the run that the plan does not show.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Joins move onto the gables this time round. 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. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A locked door costs the day, not an hour. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The return is remeasured even where it looks unchanged.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The ceiling is a concrete soffit with a skim on it, so there is nothing to fix into overhead and no void to hide anything in. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. Units checked before stone goes on them.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. A service duct runs between the kitchen and the bathroom stacked above it, and access to that duct stays open whatever the layout does. Anything that has to be held back goes into concrete with proper anchors rather than into a plug and a hope. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Yield is worked out fresh for the new material.