Kitchen worktops in Collier Row

Yes. A large stretch of inter-war and 1950s semis where the standard remodel is knocking the kitchen and dining room together to make a broad U with a peninsula, keeping a door out to a side utility or the garage. Run lengths land around 3m plus a 2m return, and full-height larder units go where the old chimney breast was. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The day is built around that window.

1930s semi, 1950s semi, 1960s terrace and modern infill. Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. The fitting itself is about squaring up to walls that look modern and are not: block or breeze walls with a skim that has been patched over decades, so we still dry-lay and scribe rather than trust the template edge. That is the shape of the day.

Wide estate roads with verges, individual driveways and garages, and unrestricted parking on most streets, so the van gets close and the carry is short and level. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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 installation, worktop replacement and worktop design & quotation, in that order. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. Garage-side utilities are common here, so we usually template the kitchen and the utility together and cut both from the same slab batch to keep the colour consistent.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The join is the last thing finished. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. 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.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Plumber either side of us. 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.