Kitchen worktops in Spring Grove

Yes. Big villas cut into flats and houses in multiple occupation, which means several small kitchens per building, runs of 1.8m to 2.6m, hard-wearing specs and landlord decision-making rather than homeowner detail. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

Large Victorian villa, Edwardian villa, 1970s conversion flat and purpose-built student housing. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. These are the multi-piece jobs: long runs, a large island and often a range cooker that cannot be moved, so the stone is templated in several pieces and how the vein runs across the joins matters. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

Some villas keep an in-and-out drive, but the conversions share a front door, a hall and a Victorian staircase with a half-landing turn that every piece has to negotiate. A window sill or a radiator on the half-landing takes the corner out of the turn at precisely the point the piece needs that corner. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The crew size follows from it.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn. Everything goes up a dog-leg staircase, so keep sections under 2m and walk the turn with a tape before you commit a cut.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Inventories record the condition of a kitchen at both ends of a tenancy, which is a practical argument for a surface that looks the same in its fifth year as its first. 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. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. Any island overhang past about 300mm will not carry weight on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or brackets have to be let into the units first, and that is agreed at template stage, not on fit day. The old top hid it; the new one will not.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. A range sitting in a chimney recess is common, and the flanking pieces are cut with the manufacturer clearance built into the template. The old island top is frequently sitting on units that were never fixed down, which is fine for laminate and not for stone. Same units, straighter line, better surface.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first.