Kitchen worktops in East Wickham

Yes. Interwar semis mixed with postwar estate housing where the kitchens are noticeably smaller, 2.1m to 2.6m single runs with a boiler cupboard, and the usual job is a straight replacement into the existing units. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Straps and battens are chosen for lifting, not just for transit.

1930s semi, postwar council estate and 1960s terrace. Some of these plans put a bathroom on the ground floor off the kitchen, so a third door opens into a room that already has more doors than wall. The kitchen is usually a small square or L-shaped room reached through a narrow entrance lobby and a standard internal doorway, so the limit on piece length is the turn out of the lobby, and short runs mean joins are often avoidable altogether if the layout is nested tightly. Where the floor drops away the front edge is cut to suit.

Quiet residential grid with front gardens, drives on the private housing and parking courts on the estate sections; vehicle access is easy throughout. Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. Nothing new comes down a hall still full of old top.

Worktop replacement and worktop fabrication, in that order. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Cam-lock carcasses get braced before stone lands. Postwar units here are often 500mm deep rather than 600mm, so check before ordering standard-width worktop.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Veining is matched across the seam before cutting starts. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were. 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.

Where the provider has set the specification the material choice was made once for a great many kitchens, and the useful work is meeting it exactly rather than proposing something else on the day. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Repeat flats take the same replacement specification. 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 same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. No payment is due before the template. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Floors are a sand and cement screed over concrete, laid fast and worn since, so they are hard, solid and seldom flat. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Cut-outs are set out from the units, not the appliance box.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. A booked slot dictates the order the frame is filled in.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The route is protected once and then used four times.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. A filler strip is evidence, not decoration.