Bickley worktops
The kitchens we meet in Bickley
In Bickley, what the local housing does to stone worktop supply and fitting is worth knowing before you commit to anything. 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. Neither case is harder than the other for us. Both start with somebody standing in the kitchen with a tape.
Retrofitted underfloor heating goes into the new part of the floor and stops at the old part, so the build-up changes partway across the room. Weight arrives as a figure per square metre and turns into a question about the floor, which is worth asking in any building where a timber span carries the kitchen. Heat tolerance is a property of the material, not a claim about it.
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. A kitchen of this size runs to two slabs almost every time, and once a second slab is in the quotation the question shifts from rate per square metre to which slab you actually want to live with. Short pieces are the argument for buying a slab outright.
The housing on these streets is late-Victorian villa, Edwardian detached, 1930s detached and 1970s executive detached. A quote that ignores which one you have is guessing.
