Kitchen worktops in Eel Pie Island

Yes. Small idiosyncratic homes, many self-built or converted from boathouses and studios, with kitchens of 2m to 2.8m against a timber-framed wall, lightweight construction throughout, and open-plan living where a peninsula does the work of an island. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

converted boathouse, self-built river chalet, 1970s island house and artist studio conversion. Many were built with a solid sub-floor to the rear rooms, so the kitchen floor is concrete and level while the front of the house is suspended timber. 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. A wall that leans is machined to the lean.

There is no vehicle access at all - everything crosses the humpbacked footbridge and then goes along narrow paths, usually on a sack barrow or by hand, and the island floods on high spring tides. Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. No van gets on the island, so pieces are sized to be carried over the footbridge by two people, which usually means 1.5m maximum and more joints than you would normally accept.

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. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Long lengths go down first, short pieces fill around them. An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Sealant seals. It does not fit. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked with whoever actually holds the keys. 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.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward metre takes the longest.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Edwardian terraces are wider and taller than the Victorian houses next to them, so the kitchen usually takes a full-width rear room rather than a narrow outrigger. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. A century of movement is taken out at the bench.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The side return was an outside toilet and a coal store before it was ever a kitchen, and the walls left over from that are half a brick thick. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Undermount cut-outs are polished before anything leaves.