Kitchen worktops in Eltham

Yes. Overwhelmingly 1930s semis, a kitchen of roughly 2.4m by 3m at the back with a garden door and a separate dining room in front. The standard job is a rear or side-return extension that merges the two into one long room with a 3.5m to 4m run and an island. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

1930s semi, Edwardian terrace, postwar infill and 1960s flats. The rear door swings inward across the end of the run, so the last few hundred millimetres of worktop are only reachable with the door shut. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Old floors get packed, not argued with.

Suburban streets with front drives and dropped kerbs on most roads, so the van usually gets within a few metres of the door; the stretches around the High Street and the station are the exception. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

Worktop installation, in that order. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. The classic Eltham job is templating a new extension where the old back wall has come out, get the steel-supported opening measured properly, it is rarely square to the new build.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. 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.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Old plaster gets scribed to, never fought with.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Sash windows in the addition sit low and the sill can land under standard worktop height, so the top is notched round it or the run stops short of it. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.