Kitchen worktops in Cranbrook

Yes. Big Edwardian villas around Valentines Park with generous original footprints, so kitchens here are often already large enough without extending and the work is a straight replacement of a tired run plus an island the room can genuinely take. Where houses have been split into flats the kitchens are small, awkwardly shaped around the original chimney breasts, and need a template rather than a cut list. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not.

large Edwardian villa, inter-war semi and converted flat. There is a door to the garden, a door to the hall and often a door to a utility, so the perimeter run is interrupted three times. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. The age of the house sets the pace of it.

Wide tree-lined roads with a good number of original carriage drives, so a van can usually get close to the door, but the front paths are long and often stepped up to a raised ground floor. 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. 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. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections.

Worktop installation 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Housings set out for laminate are checked first. The house is wide but the front steps are the pinch point, we carry sideways up to the porch, and a heavy 30mm island top usually needs four hands rather than two.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Notice goes out before the crew is booked. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. 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. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. 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. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A front path with a gate and a turn or two adds handling before the door is even reached, and every handling movement is another chance to catch a corner. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.

Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The return is offered up last.