Kitchen worktops in Rushey Green

Yes. Corbett-built terraces east of the main road with the standard narrow rear addition, 2.4m to 3m galleys until a side return goes in, after which they become 4m kitchen-diners with an island and a rooflight. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The strapping answers to the walk, not the drive.

late Victorian Corbett terrace, Edwardian terrace and postwar infill flats. Where a side return has been infilled, the join between old brick and new blockwork lands mid-run and the two faces are never in one plane. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

Long uniform streets with permit bays and no drives, plus shared side passages between pairs of houses that give rear access on some plots but not others. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house. Whether there's a side passage decides the job, where one exists you can get a full-length piece into a rear extension without touching the hallway.

A single long run down one side puts every cut-out in one piece, so the sink, the hob and any drainer grooves all take material out of the same length. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The corner is proven on the bench first. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Scheme rules on working hours are checked first. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. 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. No payment is due before the template. Party wall settlement pulls the floor down at one side of the room, so a long run reads level at one end and not at the other. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Real dimensions go on the cut list, not nominal ones.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. Stacking order is a parking decision here.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. A semi has a side passage, and whether it is wide enough to carry a piece flat and turn it in at the back door is the first thing worth measuring. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. The bench proves it before the van moves.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.