Kitchen worktops in Streatham Hill

Yes. Purpose-built flats dominate, including 1930s blocks where the original kitchens are narrow galleys with a service door and a maid's cupboard, and the usual job is re-topping within that footprint. Larger Victorian houses that remain whole take a rear extension with a run and a small island. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

Edwardian mansion block, 1930s modernist block, Large Victorian villa and Conversion flat. These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. Mansion block kitchens are full of boxed-in soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing is usually plywood or plasterboard that stops short of the ceiling, so the splashback run gets broken up by returns rather than running clean wall to wall. Cut from the same slab run as the tops.

Several of the blocks are listed or in a conservation area, so no fixings to communal fabric and no propping doors open; lifts are original and small. The A23 is a red route with no stopping, so unloading happens on side roads and the carry starts from there. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. Joint positions follow from that.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. The 1930s galley kitchens are barely 1.8m wide, which means a standard 600mm top plus an opposite run leaves under 600mm of walking space — check the client actually wants both sides before fabricating.

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. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Corners get their own pieces. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one 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 template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. No stone is cut from a plan. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.