Kitchen worktops in Eden Park

Yes. Quiet inter-war streets around the station where kitchens are typically a modest rear room extended by 2-3m, giving an L-shape with a run under the window and a peninsula facing the garden doors. Fewer full islands than Bickley or Chislehurst because the footprints are smaller. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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 parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

1930s semi, 1930s detached, 1950s bungalow and 1980s close housing. Solid brick with a render coat is firm to work against and out of plumb, so the scribe at worktop height is different from the one at plinth level. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged.

Short front drives that take one car, so the van usually parks half on the road, and side gates that are just about wide enough if the bins are moved first. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. 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. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. Peninsulas here nearly always end at a set of garden doors, so the end panel and overhang have to clear the door swing, which is worth checking at template rather than on fit day.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Scribed one piece at a time. Where the sill lands inside the height an upstand would occupy there is no upstand, and the stone either dies into the reveal or stops short of it. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Same footprint, different tolerances. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The sill was always low. Nobody had to care until now.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The kitchen sits on the far side of the hall from the front door, so even with easy access outside there is still a turn to make inside. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. One datum for every run in the room.