Kitchen worktops in Southall Green

Yes. Closely packed terraces, many subdivided, with narrow galley kitchens in the rear return and a covered outdoor cooking area at the back of the garden for anything heavy. A resident bay and a shared-use bay can sit on the same street under different rules, and it is usually the shared one a visitor permit or a ticket touches. 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. The van does not stay on a main road once it is empty.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, subdivided house and flat above shop. That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected.

The tightest streets in the borough. Terraced frontages open straight onto the pavement, there is no side access at all, and permit parking plus daytime market traffic leaves no room to unload. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Timing the two carries is most of the planning.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A plumber either side of us. With no side access and no front garden, the van blocks the road while you carry, so you arrive early and you move quickly.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. One datum for every run in the room. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Out and in on the same permission. 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.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A shared-use bay allows a paid stay up to a set maximum, and that maximum is routinely shorter than the working day the job needs. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Found at template, not on fit day.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Ceilings are generous and the rooms are narrow, so the runs are long, the aisle is tight and there is nowhere to stand a slab on edge. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Packers under the carcass, not shims under the stone.