Kitchen worktops in Cannon Hill

Yes. Houses backing onto the common have kitchens reorientated to face the green, often with a peninsula under a rear window rather than a full extension. The 1960s low-rise blocks have compact fitted kitchens where a single 2.4m run and a return is the whole job. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Two loads, one space, one day.

1930s semi, 1960s low-rise flat and Postwar detached. The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. Access is generally through the front door and a short straight hall into the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than a Victorian terrace, though rear access through a back garden or shared path is often the better route if it exists. Old floors get packed, not argued with.

Roads bordering the common are quiet but have limited turning space and grass verges that a loaded van will sink into after rain. Flats in the low-rise blocks are reached by external stairs with an open landing, which makes wind a genuine handling issue with a slab on edge. Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. A spare panel is cheaper now than next year. In the flats the window sill often sits lower than the worktop line, so a sill-height check has to happen before the sink run is cut.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. An owner can wait for it; a void period cannot. 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.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The strip-out is the part worth planning.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. The shape is already there to be measured, which makes the template straightforward and leaves the strip-out as the part that actually needs planning. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it.