Kitchen worktops in Foots Cray

Yes. Mixed stock along the river: small older cottages with tight rear kitchens, postwar estate flats with 2.4m galleys, and interwar semis in between. Most work is replacement rather than redesign in rooms that were never large. 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 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. The carry happens twice here, so the distance counts twice.

Victorian cottage terrace, 1930s semi, postwar council estate and 1960s maisonette. That rear wall carries the back door and the only window, which leaves very little uninterrupted length for a sink run. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Same units, straighter line, better surface.

The main road through is busy and narrow with the river bridge as a pinch point; the estate sections have parking courts and rear pathways and the cottages have no off-street parking at all. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Load order is set by the order the pieces will be carried.

Worktop replacement and worktop fabrication, in that order. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Ten metres of upstand out of what the tops left. The older cottages near the river have settled floors, level the units off a datum line, not off the floor.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Geometry first, then the saw. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Appliance changes after nesting are a new piece. 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.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. A square internal corner is a crack waiting.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A lift diagonal is a workshop dimension as much as a site one.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Spares crated with the batch and labelled by unit.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The wall behind the old top has not been seen in years.