Kitchen worktops in Forest Hill

Yes. Big hillside villas divided into flats sit alongside intact family terraces. Whole houses often have a lower-ground or rear-extension kitchen with an island, while the flats have kitchens carved out of large rooms where high ceilings, deep skirtings and bay windows eat the usable run. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

large Victorian villa, Victorian terrace, 1930s semi and 1960s flats. There is a door to the garden, a door to the hall and often a door to a utility, so the perimeter run is interrupted three times. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. The house sets the order of work.

Very steep roads on both sides of the valley, tight bends and limited parking near the station; a lot of houses sit above the road behind long flights of steps with the garden well below. A front path with a gate and a turn or two adds handling before the door is even reached, and every handling movement is another chance to catch a corner. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Nesting follows the route, not the other way round.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. The gradient is the constraint, check the van can hold the hill outside the house before planning the offload.

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. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Cut oversize on purpose, every time. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Join positions belong to whoever signed. 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.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The crate is built to the same measurement.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. A utility or boot room usually takes a second run of stone, templated with the kitchen and fitted after it. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Every unit gets a level on it before a piece lands.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. A deep butler sink and a boiling tap on the same length put two heavy cut-outs within a metre of each other. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. Levelled first, then set, then sealed.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes.