Kitchen worktops in South Hackney

Yes. A mix of Georgian and Victorian terraces around Well Street with the kitchen in the rear addition on an L of 3-3.5m, plus estate flats with fixed galleys. Extension work is common but modest because the gardens here are short. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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. The old tops have to go somewhere as well.

Georgian terrace, Victorian terrace, post-war estate and conversion flat. Boxed sash frames swallow a hundred millimetres of wall on each side of the opening, so the wall between a window and a corner is shorter than a plan makes it look. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first.

Streets are permit-only with filtered junctions and Victoria Park Road carries traffic with limited stopping. Terrace halls are narrow with the stair close to the door, though some streets have back gates onto rear alleys. 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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. That family has lived on a building site long enough. Where a rear alley gate exists it is the better route in, but the alleys are uneven and shared, so check the surface before committing to wheeling anything down one.

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. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Any overhang gets underpinned first. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One visit where permission only stretches to one. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Original shutter boxes survive in the reveals of the front rooms and stand proud of the plaster, and that is the line a run under the window has to be scribed to. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The fabric gets checked while it is open.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Where the kitchen has taken the bay, the end of the room is three facets of glass set at angles and there is no straight wall left to finish against. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there.