Stone worktops in Fulham

Yes. Fulham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of the borough. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. Whatever the standing allows, the stone leaves that van finished, because every edge, cut-out and internal radius is machined at the works and none of it is open to reconsideration at the kerb. The last hour on a granite kitchen belongs to the sealer. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. Alcoves either side of the old breast chop the run into short lengths, and a kitchen made of short lengths is the case where buying a slab outright beats buying the square metres, because the remainder is paid for in both. True walls and standard carcasses give the best yield there is. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Every notch and every scribe is machined into the piece before it leaves the works, and a hard sintered surface is the least forgiving of a tight internal corner, so one is always cut with a generous radius. Movement in a stone needs length to read as anything at all.

Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. Where a seam becomes unavoidable the choice of stone starts to matter, because a fine even speckle closes a joint almost invisibly and a broad vein simply will not. The route rewrites the cut list, and the cut list is the price. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. A granite kitchen ends its day with a sealer, and a sealer wants a dry face and a quiet hour afterwards, so that hour is written into the day rather than borrowed from it. What stands on the van is finished stone, not raw slab.

The wall between the original room and the return usually carries a steel, and the plaster line above it steps, so anything full height behind the run is measured separately from the top. A shape like that nests kindly on a slab, so more of what gets bought ends up on the units and the rate per square metre behaves much as the brochure says it will. Extra depth sounds free and frequently buys another slab. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. A hob dropped into the middle of a length puts sustained warmth at the lip of a cut-out, and an engineered surface will yellow there across ten years where a natural one takes it without comment. A tight inside corner is where brittle material gives up. Send the run lengths, say where the sink and hob will sit, and tell us which way the room faces and what lighting is going in above the working run. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. That changes which questions are worth asking about the stone, because somebody staying put wants to know how a honed face marks in five years and somebody selling wants to know how it photographs next spring. Twenty five years on the material, five on the workmanship.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. 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. A run that sits under strong sun for hours every afternoon suits a surface built to be stable in daylight, because a resin-bound stone is made for indoor use and sustained sunlight is the one thing it was never designed around. The wall decides the scribe and the scribe decides the depth.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. Which stone belongs on top of all that is a separate question from the building itself, and it is the one with a figure attached, because supply alone runs from £110 to £550 per square metre before a single cut has been made. Colour gets chosen under kitchen lights, never under showroom ones.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A single long run down one side puts every cut-out in one piece, so the sink, the hob and any drainer grooves all take material out of the same length. A mitred corner asks the pattern to turn through a right angle, which an even speckle does without comment and a marble-look stone makes a performance of. Where the run beats the slab, the stone decides how the seam reads.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. Rooms in these houses run long and narrow with the only honest daylight at the garden end, so a pale honed surface does more for the working half of the kitchen than any colour with depth in it. A kitchen with no window of its own needs tone rather than colour.