Kitchen worktops in Blackheath

Yes. Around the village and the heath, tall Georgian and Victorian houses put the kitchen on the lower ground or in a rear extension, with long narrow runs and a lot of freestanding-look joinery. In the Span estates off Blackheath Park the kitchens are small, precisely planned and open to the living space, where a heavy 30mm slab overpowers the original detailing. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

Georgian terrace, early Victorian villa, 1950s-60s Span estate at Blackheath Park and Edwardian detached. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

Conservation-area frontages with railings, lightwells and basement steps, tight permit parking around the village and the heath roads, and Span estates laid out around communal parking with a footpath carry to the door. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. Lower-ground kitchens down a straight but narrow basement stair are the recurring problem, most pieces have to be jointed to get them in at all.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. 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.

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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units kept, surface changed. 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.