Kitchen worktops in Edmonton Green

Yes. Tower and slab-block flats around the Green have genuinely tiny kitchens - a single 2.1m to 2.4m run with a return under the window, no dishwasher, and a wall-mounted boiler that dictates where the tall unit goes. Terraced houses off Fore Street are a little bigger but still single-run. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. One trip is always better than three.

1960s tower block, Victorian terrace and post-war maisonette. A tower block runs one or two lifts for many floors, so a lift out of service postpones a job rather than making it harder. The carry is the constraint. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Block work means booking the lift with the estate office, and in the older towers the lift car is under 2m diagonal, so a 3m slab will not go up - it goes in cut, or up the stairs with four men. Parking is on the estate roads with permit restrictions. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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 splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The prep list is not optional. Measure the lift and the stair half-landing before you promise a single-piece top here, because most of this stock forces a joint you did not want.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The units stay, the surface changes. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.