Kitchen worktops in Bickley

Yes. Big detached houses with kitchen-diners that were often knocked through from the old scullery and breakfast room, so you get an island of 2.4m or more plus a separate utility and often a boot room. Runs of 4m against a rear wall are normal and second sinks in the utility are common. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

late-Victorian villa, Edwardian detached, 1930s detached and 1970s executive detached. Original joinery is deep and stands proud of the plaster, so the run is plotted to the units rather than to the wall behind them. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. That is the shape of the day.

Wide roads, in-and-out gravel drives and generous frontages mean the van gets close to the door, but the front steps on the older villas are often deep and the kitchen sits at the back down a long hallway. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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 design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. The stock here justifies thicker material and mitred waterfall ends, and clients expect the island to be a single piece, so we plan the slab layout around the island first and let the perimeter take the joints.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Eased in, never forced. 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 fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.