Stone worktops in Custom House

Yes. Custom House is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. 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 honed face marks on grit, so nothing is set down bare. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. These kitchens are usually knocked through to the dining room, so the surface is read from two sides at once and the figure has to carry across the pieces rather than restart at every join. Seen from both sides, the figure has to run continuously. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. 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. Porous or sealed is a decision about the next ten years.

A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. The last hour on a granite kitchen belongs to the sealer.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. A pale honed face earns its keep in a room short of daylight. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. A hob dropped into the middle of a length puts sustained warmth at the lip of a cut-out, and an engineered surface will yellow there across ten years where a natural one takes it without comment. A short upstand shows a fragment of pattern, never a run of it. Confirm the depth of the units, the total run lengths and whether an island or peninsula is going in, and tell us the colour temperature of the lighting. 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. 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. A week under your own lights is how a colour declares itself.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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. Reach across an unsupported span is a thickness question.

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. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. Side light from the garden is what lets a stone with movement in it actually be seen, which is why a busier granite or a veined quartz earns its keep here and a flat single colour rarely does. Side light flatters movement and wastes a flat colour.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. Sintered surfaces are the hardest of the three to machine and the messiest to cut wet, which is precisely why none of that happens on a public pavement. What stands on the van is finished stone, not raw slab.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. An island is the piece that decides whether one slab covers the kitchen or two, and a second slab arrives as a step in the figure rather than a gentle slope. The shape sets the cut list and the cut list sets the stone bill.