Kitchen worktops in Yiewsley

Yes. Small terrace kitchens in the older streets and compact apartment kitchens in the newer canalside blocks. Galley layouts, single runs of 2.4m to 3m, and no island in either case. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. Booking the bay for the whole day is the honest plan.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, 1960s flat and canalside new-build apartment. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.

The High Street is a busy through route and the level crossing at West Drayton backs traffic up. The new blocks have controlled underground parking and lift booking. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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 replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The building keeps working around us. The terraces have no side access whatsoever, so every slab goes through the front room and the hallway door turn is what limits the piece length.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A rolling programme loses a flat to one missing key. 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.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward metre takes the longest.

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. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The shape is measured again, not copied off the old top.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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. The shell is the constant here; the surface is not.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. Nothing goes back on carcasses the building has pulled out of square.