Kitchen worktops in St Ann's

Yes. Solid Victorian and Edwardian terraces between Green Lanes and West Green Road, mostly single-family with the kitchen in a rear addition and a modest knock-through into the dining room. Newer housing on the redeveloped hospital land brings compact open-plan kitchens with a short island. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. 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 and new hospital-site housing. The kitchen occupies the ground floor of the addition with a garden door at the far end, so there is a second way in that is narrower than the front door and a great deal shorter. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Old floors get packed, not argued with.

Residential streets are permit-controlled and narrow, and several have modal filters and planters that stop you driving straight through - check the route before the day rather than relying on a satnav. Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. 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. Waste goes out the way the stone came in, so the route stays clear.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Repairable in place beats replaced whole. Knock-throughs in this stock usually leave a 100mm nib at the chimney breast, and the top has to be scribed round it - it is the single most common re-cut on these jobs.

Some of them overhang on two sides at once, and each side is worked out separately, because the load on an edge people lean against is not the load on an edge people walk past. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Disposal is named, not assumed. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. No money is taken before the template happens. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. 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.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. The chimney breast has almost always been taken out of the kitchen with the stack left standing above it, so that bay of wall is newer plasterwork on a different plane. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. One visit, our own installers.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. 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 join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The join is the last thing finished.