Kitchen worktops in Tufnell Park

Yes. Wide tall Victorian terraces, many split into upper and lower maisonettes, so you get two different jobs on the same street: a garden-level kitchen-diner across the back of the lower ground, and a top-flat kitchen squeezed into a small rear room. The lower-ground rooms are deep but not wide, so a peninsula fits where an island does not. Controlled hours that end in the middle of the afternoon make the second half of the day easy and put the whole problem in the first half. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

late Victorian terrace, four-storey terrace with lower ground and conversion flat. Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. The wall behind the old top has not been seen in years.

Junction Road and Brecknock Road are bus-heavy with limited loading, and the side streets are CPZ Monday to Friday and frequently one-way. Lower-ground flats are entered by a front area stair or through the main house and down an internal flight with a half landing. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day. Split maisonettes mean templating two kitchens in one building with completely different constraints, and the lower-ground damp-proofing detail changes how you fix upstands to the rear wall.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The island top is the one that may want its own slab. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The signature at the end belongs to somebody with authority. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A cast iron soil stack runs down the outside of the rear wall, so moving the sink means a fresh penetration through solid brick. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A single day, planned properly.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.

The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Open-tread and cantilevered stairs give nothing to lean a piece against, so the whole weight stays on the crew for the full length of the flight. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves.