Kitchen worktops in Selhurst

Yes. Terraced and semi-detached stock with modest rear kitchens, mostly straight runs of 2.7-3.2m with the boiler and the back door competing for the same wall. A lot of tenanted properties, so hard-wearing finishes and simple layouts rather than islands. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Long panels and long carries do not mix.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian semi, post-war infill and converted flats. The chimney breast is usually still standing with the opening blocked up, and the alcoves either side of it are rarely the same width as each other. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. The plaster behind it is the real question.

Match-day traffic and parking restrictions around the stadium close streets off at short notice, and the rest of the time the terraces have no off-street parking at all. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. 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. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. We check the fixture list before booking a fit here, because a Saturday delivery on a home game day means the van will not get down the street.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. Height is agreed before the cut list closes. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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.

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. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Out and in on the same permission. 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.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. 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. Nothing in a house of this age is square, and the kitchen is usually the part that has been altered most often. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Siliconed to the top, never grouted.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. 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. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. 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 plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Packing the carcasses is part of the replacement.