Kitchen worktops in Stepney Green

Yes. The Georgian houses put the kitchen in the lower ground or rear ground floor with low ceilings, thick masonry and a run of around 3m broken by a chimney breast. Victorian mansion flats have a small original kitchen with a deep window reveal and a larder recess that people keep and shelve out. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Packing takes its cue from the distance to the door.

Georgian merchant house, late-Victorian mansion dwelling and post-war infill block. Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. Lath and plaster is cut for, never cut into.

Several of the older houses are listed or in a conservation area, so scaffolding, hoisting and any external route need agreeing in advance. Front steps up to a raised entrance and a narrow original hallway mean a slab has to come in on edge and turn at the stair foot. A hoisted piece needs a clear drop zone, a lifting plan and someone stationed at street level, none of which gets arranged on the morning. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Load order is set by the order the pieces will be carried.

Worktop fabrication, 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Nested for the job in front of us. Old masonry walls bow and the chimney breast is never plumb, so template on the finished plaster and expect deep scribes on both ends of the run.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Dry-assembled to the shape of your run. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The signature on the drawing carries the cost of it. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. What comes off first is settled before the doors shut.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Join count follows the shape, not the metreage.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. The awkward corner is cut first, while the slab is whole.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. The piece is made for the room the builders left.