Kitchen worktops in East Dulwich

Yes. The archetypal London side-return job repeated street after street: kitchen knocked through into an L-shaped rear extension roughly 6m by 4m, a 3.6m run along the flank wall, a 2m to 2.4m island with a hob or just prep, and a large single-bowl undermount sink under a rear window or rooflight. Plenty of zones run at the weekend as well as through the week, so a Saturday date is not automatically the easier one to work. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Victorian bay-front terrace, Edwardian terrace and 1930s semi pockets. The lean-to roof drains into a valley gutter against the addition next door, and a long leak there shows at the head of the kitchen wall rather than on the ceiling. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Carried once, and carried properly.

Long straight terraced streets with parking on both sides and a CPZ near the station, no vehicular rear access, and a typical route of front door, hall, and a straight run through the knocked-through ground floor - workable but tight past a stair balustrade. 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. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Edge profiles are finished before the stone is ever stood on end.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Every flat cut off one drawing, errors included. Nearly every job includes an island with a mitred end and an undermount sink, so the fabrication drawing matters as much as the survey here.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Left and right alcove pieces are marked and stay marked. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A landlord repeating a kitchen gets the same detail cut. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The cut list answers to the way in first.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. A picture rail, a deep skirting and a moulded architrave all sit in the way of anything that assumes flat wall from floor to ceiling. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The join is polished flat before we call it done.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. The spares are cut while the slab is still open.