Kitchen worktops in Coulsdon

Yes. Split between older inter-war semis with extended rear kitchens and newer estate housing where the kitchen-diner is already open-plan and only the tops get upgraded. The newer houses come with narrow 600mm cabinets and a peninsula rather than an island. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A short bay slot is when the tall pieces get damaged.

1930s semi, post-war detached, 2000s Cane Hill new-build and town-centre flats. The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork.

The valley floor around the town centre is straightforward with parking, but the houses on the chalk slopes either side have steep approach roads and tiered front gardens with retaining walls and steps. A pendant light hanging in the middle of a hall ceiling sets the angle a piece can be tilted to, and it is the measurement nobody thinks to take. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Four hands or eight is settled before the tail lift drops.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Six kitchens, one socket layout, one panel drawing. On the newer estate housing the cabinets are shallow and the walls are plasterboard on dabs, so any breakfast bar overhang needs proper brackets fixed back to timber, not just glued to the carcass.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Support first, stone second. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall has to be ready. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The kitchen door opens inwards into the middle of a run, so the usable length of that wall stops well short of the corner. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. The outside walls are cavity and the party wall is solid brick, so fixings behave differently on the two long walls of the same room. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A hall that widens further in is still only as good as its tightest point, and that point is usually within a metre of the front door. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before.