Kitchen worktops in Catford

Yes. Edwardian terraces behind the Broadway with back-addition kitchens, plus a lot of purpose-built and converted flats where the kitchen is a single 2.4m to 3m run against one wall. Rear extensions are common on the terraces to the south and east. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. The strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, 1960s council block and 1930s mansion flats. The front door of the building sits at the top of a step off a tiled path, so the carry starts outside the building rather than at the door of the flat. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

A one-way system and two stations funnel traffic tightly through the centre with loading restrictions on the main roads; the residential streets are permit-parked and narrow. A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The void ends whether we have finished or not. Flats over the shops around the Broadway almost always mean a stair carry and a jointed run, price that in rather than discovering it on the day.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Stone wants gables where laminate needed none. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A forced back edge cracks weeks later. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. The signature at the end belongs to somebody with authority. 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.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. The original stair has an open well running the full height of the building, which occasionally lets a long piece go up vertically where it would never take the turns. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The strip-out is the part worth planning.