Kitchen worktops in Elm Park

Yes. A planned 1930s estate built to a small number of repeating house types, so the kitchens are consistently modest, a narrow rear room with the back door in the corner and barely 2.4m of usable wall. Almost every job here involves either taking out the dining room wall or adding a shallow rear extension to get a workable L, and the client usually keeps a separate utility space by the back door. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Both loads want the same few metres of kerb.

1930s Costain-built estate semi, 1930s terrace and post-war infill. Front gardens are short and the path runs straight to the door, so the carry from a van at the kerb is a few metres over level ground. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

Uniform estate roads with front gardens, dropped kerbs on many houses and a side alley between every pair, so there is nearly always a route to the back without going through the hall. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside.

Worktop replacement 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. The house types repeat, but the back-door corner is the killer detail, we always confirm the door swing before finalising the return length.

A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Breakfast bars get the steel they never had. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Scheme rules on working hours are checked first. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Cottage estate houses were built to a small number of standard plans, so the kitchen is compact, roughly square and predictable in the good sense. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. There is nothing to pay before the template visit. The extension slab was poured to its own level, so there is a lip or a ramp where the new floor meets the original one. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. The old top is heavy waste, and booked as waste.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The void ends whether we have finished or not.