Kitchen worktops in St Margarets

Yes. Grand detached villas on the old estate roads sit alongside tight Edwardian terraces, so the work splits between 4m island kitchens in a rear garden room and 2.4m galley refits in a terrace where the kitchen is still in the original back addition. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day.

Victorian villa on the St Margarets estate, Edwardian terrace, 1930s semi and modern riverside flats. Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. Carried once, and carried properly.

A dense one-way street pattern with narrow carriageways, permit bays and a railway bridge that cuts the area in two; the estate roads are wider with driveways but several have gate piers set less than 2.5m apart. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley.

Worktop installation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. Gate piers and side alleys under a metre wide are the recurring problem - the slab often has to go through the house because it will not go round it.

Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The join is the last thing finished. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Nothing bears on plasterboard. 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.

An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked with whoever actually holds the keys. 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.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days.

Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. The carry from where the van can stand to the door is boarded wherever it crosses gravel, grass or a stone floor. Old floors get packed, not argued with.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Old flues run inside the wall behind the run, so a deep fixing finds a void about as often as it finds brick. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Dust extraction indoors, or the cut happens outside.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. These houses usually sit in their own grounds with a long approach, so the carry from van to door is longer than anything inside the building. The island is set out from the room datum rather than from the nearest wall, so it reads level against the perimeter. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.