Kitchen worktops in Green Street Green

Yes. Post-war detached and link-detached with integral garages, so the kitchen usually backs onto the garage and the utility is a converted garage corner with a second worktop run. Kitchens are moderate size, typically an L plus a peninsula, and clients often want the garage side made into a proper laundry. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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. The van does not stay on a main road once it is empty.

1960s detached, 1970s link-detached, 1980s cul-de-sac housing and bungalow. The kitchen is at the front or the back depending on the plan, and which it is decides whether there is a rear door on the route at all. Access is generally through the front door and a short straight hall into the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than a Victorian terrace, though rear access through a back garden or shared path is often the better route if it exists. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.

Cul-de-sac layouts with turning heads, so the van can get right to the door, but garage-side entrances have a step and a fire door that limits swing. 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. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. The way out is measured with the way in.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A builder-finish kitchen upgrades in a morning. Utility runs in converted garages sit on a different floor level to the kitchen, so we template the two areas as separate jobs even when it is one continuous cabinet line on the drawing.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A corner that will not close is never forced. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Two visits mean two people taking a day off. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. Same footprint, different tolerances.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. These were built on a solid ground floor slab, so nothing bounces and nothing can be packed down, only up. The fitting itself is about squaring up to walls that look modern and are not: block or breeze walls with a skim that has been patched over decades, so we still dry-lay and scribe rather than trust the template edge. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The return is offered up last.