Kitchen worktops in Bermondsey

Yes. Two very different jobs sit side by side here: bay-front terraces off Southwark Park Road where the kitchen has been pushed into a side-return extension with a 3.5m run under a rooflight, and Bermondsey Street warehouse flats where the kitchen is a single long galley run against a load-bearing brick flank wall with an island floated in the open-plan middle. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

Victorian terrace, Victorian warehouse conversion, 1930s LCC estate block and 2010s infill flats. The lean-to roof drains into a valley gutter against the addition next door, and a long leak there shows at the head of the kitchen wall rather than on the ceiling. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Whatever the shell has done since is dealt with now.

Jamaica Road and Tower Bridge Road are red routes with no stopping, so slabs come off on the side streets under a CPZ suspension; warehouse conversions usually mean a single narrow original stair with a half-landing turn, not a lift. Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. In the warehouse flats nothing is square or plumb - the brickwork bellies, so every back edge gets scribed rather than trusted to the tape.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A corner that was butted can be mitred this time. 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. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A window sill or a radiator on the half-landing takes the corner out of the turn at precisely the point the piece needs that corner. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Nothing changes hands until after the template. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. Twenty years of settlement is measured, not argued with.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it.