Stone worktops in Greenwich

Yes. Greenwich is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE10. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of the borough. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. Dry cutting quartz burns the resin and the burn does not polish out. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The rear door swings inward across the end of the run, so the last few hundred millimetres of worktop are only reachable with the door shut. The kitchen in one of these sits in the back addition and takes its daylight from one end, so the working half of the run is the darker half and a pale stone with a honed or matt face does more there than any colour with depth in it. True walls and standard carcasses give the best yield there is. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. A tight inside corner is where brittle material gives up.

Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. That caps the longest piece, and a run split into two lengths nests differently on the slab, which moves the yield and moves the figure with it. Speckle forgives a joint that a sweeping figure never would. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. A honed face marks on grit, so nothing is set down bare.

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 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. Yield is a property of the room as much as of the slab. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. The wall decides the scribe and the scribe decides the depth. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. 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. A chip in natural stone can be filled and polished in place.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The kitchen normally sits in the back addition or a later side return, which puts the run against the oldest and least straight wall in the building. 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. Stone is bought whole and paid for whole, offcut and all.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. 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. An island is the piece that decides whether one slab covers the kitchen or two, and a second slab arrives as a step in the figure rather than a gentle slope. Two mitres and three lengths is bench work, not surface area.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. 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. No colour and no edge is adjustable once a piece is machined.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Sash windows in the addition sit low and the sill can land under standard worktop height, so the top is notched round it or the run stops short of it. 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.