Kitchen worktops in Munster Village

Yes. A lot of these houses were long ago split into a ground-floor flat with the garden and a first-floor flat with the loft, so you get two small kitchens per address, each around 2.4-3m with a peninsula. The upper flats put the kitchen in a rear addition with a low mono-pitch ceiling, which limits wall-cupboard height and pushes the design toward a longer run and stone upstands. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

flat-fronted Victorian terrace, two-storey terrace split into upper and lower flats, flat over shop on Munster Road and small modern infill. 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. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Flat-fronted terraces open straight onto the pavement with no front garden, so you unload directly at the door but you are standing in the footway while you do it - a short window and a spotter is the way. Upper flats are reached by a stair immediately behind the street door with a turn at the top, which is a hard limit around 2.4-2.6m for a piece carried on edge. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Two flats in one house means two small jobs and two sets of stairs - price them as separate installs, not one address.

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. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. 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 same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first. 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.