Kitchen worktops in Brockley

Yes. Large stucco-fronted Victorian villas, most divided into flats. Garden flats have lower-ground or rear-extension kitchens with room for an island, while the upper conversions have kitchens fitted into former bedrooms with fireplaces, tall windows and no straight wall over 3m. Where the nearest legal space is a couple of streets back, the walk with each piece becomes the job, and the crew is sized for walking rather than wheeling. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The frame is filled back to front when the bay is booked short.

1860s-1880s Italianate semi-detached villa, Victorian terrace and 1970s infill flats. Where a side return has been infilled, the join between old brick and new blockwork lands mid-run and the two faces are never in one plane. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The piece is made for the room the builders left.

Conservation area with front lightwells, high steps up to the raised ground floor and mature street trees; parking is permit-controlled and the villa steps are the real obstacle, not the doorway. A lift out of service for the day turns a straightforward install into a stair carry, so the slot gets confirmed with whoever manages the building rather than against a calendar. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Worktop fabrication and worktop replacement, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Four flats, four days, no scaffold week. Raised ground floors mean six or eight steps up to the front door on almost every villa, plan every lift as a two-man strap job.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Mitres are cut as pairs, off one setting. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The alcove was never square and it still is not. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Nothing to reseal is the point in a let. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. What passed for a fit in chipboard will not pass in stone.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Car depth is the number that settles it wherever a piece cannot be stood upright, and most residential cars are shallower than the run they are serving. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. The way out is measured with the way in.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The corner is proven on the bench first.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. It decides whether the old top leaves whole.