Kitchen worktops in West Brompton

Yes. Terraces around the cemetery are narrower than the Earl's Court stucco and have shallow back additions, so the kitchen is a 2.4-3.0m single run with the boiler and the back door both interrupting it. Newer apartment stock near the station is open-plan with an island of 1.8-2.4m and a 40mm mitred edge, and there the constraint is the developer's fixed service riser rather than the wall. 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. The day is built around that window.

Victorian terrace, mansion flat, postwar infill block and new-build apartment near the station. A soil stack is strapped to the outside of the addition wall and its branch comes through low, which settles where the sink can go before any layout is drawn. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected.

The area is squeezed between the railway cutting and the cemetery wall, so there are few through routes and the side streets are one-way with resident bays right up to the junctions. New blocks require a booked loading bay and a lift booking through building management, usually with protection boards fitted to the lift car before you can use it. Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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. Whether the strip-out is a cut-up job is settled at template.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands. Two different worlds on one street - old stock needs a joint to get up the stairs, new stock needs a lift booking and a permit before you can even park.

Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. 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.

Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units stay, so the flat is usable that evening. 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.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Where an overhang is too deep for steel on its own the choice is a leg at the end or a bracket underneath, and a bracket that lands where a knee goes is worse than no bracket at all. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. The original scullery gully is still live in the yard outside the back door, and new waste from the sink joins a drain laid for a copper and a stone sink. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The tops go on level even when nothing else is.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. 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. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. 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. 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.