Kitchen worktops in Westbourne Park

Yes. Stucco terraces converted into flats with narrow galley kitchens of about 2.4m, sitting alongside estate blocks with purpose-built kitchens and newer canal-side flats with open-plan runs and a peninsula. Job size varies a lot street to street. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. Half a day of parking buys half a job.

Victorian stucco terrace, 1960s estate block and canal-side new-build. The combination boiler hangs on whichever wall happened to be external, and that decision has already used up a stretch of the only wall the run wanted. 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 shell is the constant here; the surface is not.

The Westway and the rail lines cut the area into pockets, so the driving route matters as much as the parking - several streets only connect one way. Conversions have communal halls that must stay clear, and estate blocks need a fob and a lift booking. Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Galley kitchens in these conversions are frequently under 900mm between runs - with two tops facing each other, get the finished gap confirmed before fabrication or the appliance doors foul.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The old cut-outs prove nothing. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun. 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 half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. A cleared crew arrives with its paperwork done. 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.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Lath and plaster, a settled floor and a hall with a turn in it are the three things that decide how this job runs. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Units checked before stone goes on them.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The front door of the building sits at the top of a step off a tiled path, so the carry starts outside the building rather than at the door of the flat. 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. Nothing goes back on carcasses the building has pulled out of square.

Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. The carry happens twice here, so the distance counts twice.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. The original stair has an open well running the full height of the building, which occasionally lets a long piece go up vertically where it would never take the turns. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day.