Kitchen worktops in Furzedown

Yes. A quiet grid of Edwardian and interwar houses where extensions are usually single-storey rear rather than side-return, giving a squarer kitchen that suits a U-shape with a short peninsula. Utility rooms partitioned off the back of the kitchen are common. Where a loading concession applies at all, it holds only while something is being carried, which makes it a way to unload rather than a way to park. 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. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

Edwardian terrace, Interwar semi and 1930s terrace. These were built in short runs of six or eight houses, so the party walls are solid brick and the rear elevation is a straight line with no outriggers. Most of these have a side passage and a back door, so a full-length piece can usually reach the kitchen without being cut down, and the piece sizing is driven by the slab rather than the route. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site.

The area sits inside a loop of main roads with limited through routes, so satnav approaches often fail and the van has to come in from Mitcham Lane or Tooting Bec Road. Once inside, parking pressure is moderate and most houses have a front path. Whether the kitchen sits straight ahead or off a turn at the end of the hall changes the maximum piece far more than the hall width does. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A piece is cut to the turn it has to clear.

Worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget. Where a utility is partitioned off, the two rooms usually want the same material but different thicknesses, confirm which side takes the offcuts before the slab is laid out.

The short run at the head of a U usually sits under a window, so that piece is scribed on three sides at once and has nowhere left to be pushed back to. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Seams land over gables, never over a void. 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. The relief comes out of the slab, not the fitter. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Repeat flats take the same replacement specification. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The saw never sees a length the hall will not take.

Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Geometry first, then the saw.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The old larder leaves behind a thick cold shelf and a vent brick through the outer wall, and both have to go before that wall reads flat. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. The drawing decides it before the saw does.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Where the side return has been filled in, one side of the new room is old brick and the other is new blockwork, and the two do not behave alike. Pieces are cut, mitred, machined and dry-assembled on the bench before anything is loaded onto a van. Proven on the bench, then loaded.