Kitchen worktops in Surbiton

Yes. Two clear streams: 1930s semis with a rear kitchen extended to a 3.6m run and a peninsula, and Art Deco and interwar mansion flats with original galley kitchens roughly 2m by 3m where the units stay and the tops, upstands and sink are renewed. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Victorian villa, Edwardian terrace, 1930s Art Deco mansion block and 1930s semi. These blocks were built with a lift from new, which will usually take a worktop and almost never takes a full-length island piece. This is the most managed day we do, with a hard finish time set by the block rather than by the work. That is the shape of the day.

Wide tree-lined roads with driveways on the semis, but the mansion blocks have communal entrances, half-landings and small lifts, plus resident-only parking courts with no visitor bays. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us. Interwar flats have solid but uneven screed floors and out-of-square walls, so a template beats a drawing every time here.

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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Dry-lay first, always. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sound carcasses are the condition. 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.