Kitchen worktops in Roxbourne

Yes. Repetitive interwar estate housing where every kitchen is effectively the same box, which makes it good like-for-like replacement territory: a 2.7m run with a return of about 1.2m and a back door in the corner. Extensions are less common than in the wealthier Harrow districts, so footprints usually stay as built. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is.

1930s estate semi, interwar terrace and 1960s maisonette block. The first kitchen units were metal and screwed straight into the blockwork, and their plugs are still in the wall behind whatever plaster went over them. The carry is the constraint. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.

Uniform estate roads with drives on many houses and consistent side gate widths, which makes access predictable; maisonette blocks need a shared external stair and a two-person lift up. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. 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. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty. Uniform stock means a template from one house nearly fits the next, but never assume it, because 1930s builders varied the back-door corner by an inch or two.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Clamps close the joint, colour match settles it. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Disposal is named, not assumed. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in.

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. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. 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.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. No money changes hands before the template. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Windows sit high and the sill line crosses the middle of the run, which limits what can go above the worktop. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Older buildings get the extra hour.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The original plan had one sink position, and moving it means taking a waste through a wall that does not want to be cut. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.