Kitchen worktops in Woodberry Down

Yes. Largely rebuilt as new apartment blocks, so kitchens are modern, open-plan and square, with a 3-3.5m run and a peninsula and units that arrive level and true. The remaining older blocks are the opposite, small fixed galleys of about 2.4m with no room to change anything. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. The van has to stand through both halves of the day.

post-war estate block, new-build tower, 1950s low-rise and modern apartment. Some of these are dry-lined on battens over the concrete, so a fixing either finds a batten or goes straight through to the panel behind. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. A replacement is measured against the walls as they are now.

A managed development with booked loading bays, service lifts and delivery windows, while the surrounding roads including Seven Sisters Road are busy with limited stopping. The access rules are strict but predictable once they are arranged. Whether the stone can stand on end in the car is the first question, because a lift that takes 2.1m upright takes nothing like that lying flat. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one. These are logistics jobs rather than scribing jobs, since the walls are true and the effort goes into lift booking, floor protection and hitting the agreed access window.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Any overhang gets underpinned 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Sealant seals. It does not fit. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Internal partitions are dense block finished in a hard sand and cement plaster, which is unforgiving to drill and unforgiving to make good. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The old cut-outs rarely match where the new appliances go.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward metre takes the longest.