Kitchen worktops in Barnehurst

Yes. Interwar semis on the hill by the golf course, mostly with a rear kitchen and separate dining room. A high proportion have been extended to the rear for 3.5m to 4m runs and an island, and side garages regularly become utility rooms. 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. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. It is one line among the others, and it is honest.

1930s semi, interwar detached and postwar infill. Solid brick with a render coat is firm to work against and out of plumb, so the scribe at worktop height is different from the one at plinth level. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. That is the shape of the day.

Sloping suburban roads with drives on nearly every plot and good turning space; only the station approach and the shops get congested. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop design & quotation, 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Hillside plots mean the rear garden often sits a metre below the house, so the extension floor may not match the original — template after the screed goes down.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. 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 someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.