Kitchen worktops in Uxbridge

Yes. Town-centre flats and student-let conversions with runs of 2m to 3m sit alongside 1930s semis on the outer streets where the kitchen has been opened into the dining room for a 4.5m L. Mid-market specs, quartz over granite. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, 1930s semi, town-centre apartment and student let. The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

Inside the ring road you have a one-way system and a pedestrianised High Street with timed loading only. The outer residential streets are easy with drives on most houses. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The room is cleared for the way out as much as the way in.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Rooms in a shared house are let individually, so the work has to be done around whoever is still living in the building. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Chosen against the doors that are staying. Anything inside the ring road needs an early-morning loading slot booked before the pedestrian zone closes to vehicles for the day.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Access is checked against the longest piece first. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. It was there long before we were. 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.

A landlord with several similar flats usually wants one specification repeated, so the material, the edge detail and the upstand height are recorded and reused rather than rechosen each time. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Whoever lives there hears the timing first. 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.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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 spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The old top hid it. The drawing will not.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.