Kitchen worktops in Denmark Hill

Yes. Large Victorian villas, many still in single occupation or split into generous flats, where the kitchen sits in a big square rear room - long walls allow a 3.6m to 4m run plus a proper island, and there is often a separate utility or old scullery that gets a second, shorter top. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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.

Victorian detached villa, Edwardian mansion block, interwar flats and 1960s infill. The kitchen is a rear service room with a scullery and a larder off it, and both have usually survived as separate spaces. Getting in is straightforward, so the day is spent dry-laying and scribing to walls that have never been straight. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.

A steep hill with parking bays on a slope, hospital traffic all day, and mansion blocks with a shared entrance hall and a half-turn stair; villa driveways are short and often shared. The top step is rarely the end of it, because a door swinging out onto the landing has to be held back before a piece can come off the flight. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame.

Worktop installation, in that order. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. Big rooms tempt clients into a single long piece, but the villa hallways will not take it - plan a joint at the hob or sink and make it invisible.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The return is offered up last. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Walls that are old, thick and rarely straight make dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the day. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. 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. 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.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side.