Kitchen worktops in Hither Green

Yes. The Corbett Estate is thousands of near-identical late-Victorian terraces: the original kitchen sits in the back addition, and by now most have a side-return or full-width rear extension turning it into a kitchen-diner with a 3.5m to 4.5m run and an island. Because the houses repeat, so do the layouts. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1890s-1900s Corbett Estate terrace, Edwardian terrace and postwar infill. Wider halls make the carry noticeably easier, and that alone can remove a join that a narrower terrace would have forced into the run. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The bench proves it before the van moves.

Long straight residential streets with permit parking and no off-street spaces, but most houses have a side alley or shared passage to the rear which is often the better route into an extension. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop fabrication, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Repeating house types make it predictable, but those side passages are typically under 800mm, measure before assuming a slab goes round the back.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. One datum for the whole room. 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.