Beckenham worktops
The kitchens we meet in Beckenham
If you are weighing up stone worktop supply and fitting in Beckenham, the first thing worth knowing is that the building decides more than the brochure does. Split between family houses with side-return extensions running a 4m+ galley plus an island, and a large stock of converted flats in subdivided villas where the kitchen is a 2.4m run squeezed into a former bedroom or reception corner. Both ends of the market are busy. You can leave that to us. What we need from you is a rough idea of the size and a date that suits.
Big rooms hide their falls, and the difference from one corner of a five metre floor to the other is measured in tens of millimetres. Quartz, granite and sintered stone each let you down in a different way, and choosing well is mostly a matter of knowing which of those three failures this room will provoke. Veining is a question of scale, and a postcard has no scale.
These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. Long uninterrupted lengths are where the figure in a slab finally gets to be seen, and that is the one setting where a dramatic stone repays what it costs. A compact kitchen puts the band ahead of the metreage.
What we are cutting for, here, is Victorian villa, Edwardian terrace, 1930s semi and converted flat. None of them is harder than the others; they are awkward in different ways.
