Worktops in Cranham

Yes. Cranham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. Whatever the standing allows, the stone leaves that van finished, because every edge, cut-out and internal radius is machined at the works and none of it is open to reconsideration at the kerb. A figured slab takes longer to match than a plain one. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

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. Coming off a thick laminate top changes the front edge, and twenty millimetres reads closer to what the room is used to than thirty does against existing tiling and a window board. A tall room carries a thick edge; a low one does not. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. Heat at the lip of an opening is the slow kind of damage.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. 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. What will not travel whole is designed to break somewhere sensible. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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. Stone is delivered machined, sealed and covered, in that order.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop replacement. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Colour names outlive their batches by several years. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. Fitting follows template by five to ten working days.

The advantage of a U is that every join can be put over a gable in a corner, so nothing lands in the middle of a clear length. 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. Yield is a property of the room as much as of the slab. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. A run that sits under strong sun for hours every afternoon suits a surface built to be stable in daylight, because a resin-bound stone is made for indoor use and sustained sunlight is the one thing it was never designed around. The obstruction is templated as found and cut as templated. Measure the run between the walls, note the cill height above the units, and tell us the thickness of the top that is coming off. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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. Staying put and selling on ask different questions of a stone.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Plaster over blockwork is thin and hollow in patches, so anything fixed back to the wall needs a sound spot found first. 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. The light in a room shortens the shortlist faster than the budget does.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. Where a seam becomes unavoidable the choice of stone starts to matter, because a fine even speckle closes a joint almost invisibly and a broad vein simply will not. The protective film peels off last so the finish is untouched.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. These were built on a solid ground floor slab, so nothing bounces and nothing can be packed down, only up. Kitchens in this stock are small and roughly square, so the run is short, the seam count is low, and almost all of the figure is material band rather than bench time. Honed hides the dust an older house makes all year.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run: short lengths, few joins, and a lot to work around. The surface is where the money actually moves: across the 181 surfaces we list the median is £220 per square metre, and half of them sit between £165 and £300. The cheapest stone and the dearest one share a fitting day.