Worktops in Bushey Mead

Yes. Bushey Mead is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW20. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. A granite kitchen ends its day with a sealer, and a sealer wants a dry face and a quiet hour afterwards, so that hour is written into the day rather than borrowed from it. Pieces are unloaded in laying order so the figure runs true. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. These kitchens are usually knocked through to the dining room, so the surface is read from two sides at once and the figure has to carry across the pieces rather than restart at every join. Two slabs change the question from price to preference. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. Every notch and every scribe is machined into the piece before it leaves the works, and a hard sintered surface is the least forgiving of a tight internal corner, so one is always cut with a generous radius. A cranked piece eats more slab than the two straights it replaces.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. That caps the longest piece, and a run split into two lengths nests differently on the slab, which moves the yield and moves the figure with it. Damage in transit lands on corners, so corners get eased. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Sintered surfaces are the hardest of the three to machine and the messiest to cut wet, which is precisely why none of that happens on a public pavement. A reserved slab is a slab nobody else is allowed to buy.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Where several kitchens are ordered together the sensible move is to take them all off one batch, because two slabs of the same name bought six months apart will not sit happily in the same building. Heavy daily cooking is an argument for natural stone. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Volume work tends to live at the entry end of the range, and the entry end is genuine stone rather than a compromise, since the lowest supply figure we quote is a sintered surface and not a thin laminate pretending to be one. A small kitchen still buys the remainder of the slab.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. A shape like that nests kindly on a slab, so more of what gets bought ends up on the units and the rate per square metre behaves much as the brochure says it will. A bold vein and a busy shape are an expensive pair. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. A hob dropped into the middle of a length puts sustained warmth at the lip of a cut-out, and an engineered surface will yellow there across ten years where a natural one takes it without comment. Short lengths are where a full slab starts to pay for itself. Confirm the depth of the units, the total run lengths and whether an island or peninsula is going in, and tell us the colour temperature of the lighting. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. That changes which questions are worth asking about the stone, because somebody staying put wants to know how a honed face marks in five years and somebody selling wants to know how it photographs next spring. Matching anything later means writing down the batch reference now.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The original plan put a larder and a back door on the same wall, and both leave awkward stubs once the room is opened up. Which stone belongs on top of all that is a separate question from the building itself, and it is the one with a figure attached, because supply alone runs from £110 to £550 per square metre before a single cut has been made. Pick the surface for the cooking rather than for the photograph.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. A shallow bay or a squared-off rear window means the run beneath it is rarely the same depth at both ends. The surface is where the money actually moves: across the 181 kitchens fitted the median is £220 per square metre, and half of them land between £165 and £300. The light in a room shortens the shortlist faster than the budget does.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. The unused stone rides back unless you want it, and a granite remnant makes a chopping board, a hearth or a window board instead of becoming waste. Cutting is done wet and extracted, never dry on a pavement.

Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. These kitchens have been retiled at least twice, and stripping the tiles takes the bottom band of plaster with them because the old laminate ran underneath rather than up to them. A knocked-through room means the surface is read from the dining side as well as the working side, so the figure has to run continuously and the pieces are taken from adjoining slab. The island earns the liveliest part of the stone.