Kitchen worktops in Little Heath

Yes. Inter-war semis on the Redbridge side of the Chadwell Heath boundary, with the standard back-of-house kitchen and larder that has usually been opened up to the dining room. Budgets tend to be sensible rather than showy, so the common job is a good-quality quartz top on existing or mid-range new units with matching upstands rather than a full slab splashback. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

1930s semi, inter-war terrace and post-war infill. An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. These kitchens are nearly always retiled at least twice, and stripping the old tiles takes the bottom course of plaster with it because the original laminate top ran underneath the tiles rather than up to them. Cut from the same slab run as the tops.

Quiet residential streets, most with a dropped kerb and off-street space, but the roads feeding onto the A12 and Whalebone Lane get busy and are no place to leave a van blocking traffic. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A day, not a project. Upstands rather than full splashbacks are the norm here, and the walls behind the old tiling are rarely flat, so we allow for scribing the upstand to the wall line.

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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the laser plots the intermediate points. 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.

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 plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Units kept, surface changed. 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.