Kitchen worktops in Deptford

Yes. Three distinct stocks: surviving Georgian houses with tight basement or ground-rear kitchens, estate flats with 2.4m single-run galleys, and riverside apartments with island-and-run open plan. The Georgian houses are the fiddly ones, with no square corners and thick uneven walls. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

Georgian terrace, dense Victorian terrace, 1960s-70s tower and slab estate and 2010s riverside apartment block. Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. Walls out of plumb are cut for at the bench.

Congested narrow streets, market days closing the high street, estate parking courts with height barriers, and riverside blocks that need a booked lift and loading bay. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight.

Worktop replacement and worktop fabrication, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Shared-house tops take a decade of hard use. Height barriers over the estate car parks catch people out, check the van clears them or you're carrying from the road.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The return is nested first, because it fits worst. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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 starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

Method statements, insurance certificates and named operatives are wanted before a crew is cleared to attend, all of which is routine when it is asked for a week out. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A leaseholder still needs the building to consent. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Book-matching is decided at the slab, not at the saw.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Where the walls have been dry-lined over the old lath there is a void behind the board and no solid fixing until a batten is found. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Undermount cut-outs are polished before anything leaves.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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.