Kitchen worktops in Yeading

Yes. Estate housing with small square kitchens on a two-wall layout, and the boiler and meter cupboards eating into what looks on paper like a usable run. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

Postwar estate house, 1960s maisonette and 1970s low-rise block. An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. The carry is the constraint. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Estate cul-de-sacs with parking courts, bollarded footpaths and very little turning space, and some blocks are walk-up only. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. Meter and boiler cupboards break the run into 1.2m and 900mm pieces, so there are far more joints than the square metre figure suggests.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The bench proves it before the van does. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Sound carcasses are the condition. 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.