Kitchen worktops in South Chingford

Yes. Predominantly semis with a rear kitchen of about 2.6m by 2.6m, a side door to the passage and a separate dining room, most commonly opened up into a single L-shaped room. Boilers are usually still kitchen-mounted and are worked around rather than moved. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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 timed bay does not cover a strip-out and a fit.

1930s semi-detached, post-war council-built house and interwar terrace. The consumer unit and the meter tails often sit in a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen, and that cupboard has to stay reachable whatever goes in around it. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Chipboard that has taken water will not take stone.

Straightforward suburban streets with driveways, crossovers and side passages, so the van parks on the drive and the stone goes down the side of the house. A few post-war estate roads have parking courts with height barriers. Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence. Side passages here are typically around 900mm, which passes a standard 600mm depth top on edge but not a 1m island slab, so check before planning the route.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The old cut-outs prove nothing. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward metre takes the longest. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

Method statements, insurance certificates and named operatives are wanted before a crew is cleared to attend, all of which is routine when it is asked for a week out. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Communal floors are protected the same as private ones. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Any overhang gets underpinned first.