Worktops in Kennington

Yes. Kennington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE11. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. 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. 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. Nothing about the shortlist is decided on the day itself. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. 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. Seen from both sides, the figure has to run continuously. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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 dark plain face shows every made-good line on the run.

A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. Short pieces nest tighter, and tighter nesting is less stone bought. Loading concessions differ from one zone to the next rather than following a single national rule, so what applied on the last job proves nothing about this 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 figured slab takes longer to match than a plain one.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Where several kitchens are ordered together the sensible move is to take them all off one batch, because two slabs of the same name bought six months apart will not sit happily in the same building. Batch matching is the only honest way to match a surface. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. Volume work tends to live at the entry end of the range, and the entry end is genuine stone rather than a compromise, since the lowest supply figure we quote is a sintered surface and not a thin laminate pretending to be one. The material is guaranteed for twenty five years, so choose once.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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. A mitre asks the pattern to turn a corner and be believed. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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. Internal corners are cut with a radius because square ones crack. 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. Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. 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. Neutral mid-tones survive a change of owner better than statements.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. The closet wing is a narrow projection at the back with windows on two sides, which leaves very little continuous wall for a run. 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. Side light flatters movement and wastes a flat colour.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Original panelling and shutter boxes stand out from the structural wall, so the face the units meet is joinery rather than plaster. 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. One full slab and no second is the sweet spot on price.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. 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. The waterfall leg is a whole extra piece of stone.

A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. The surface is where the money actually moves: across the 181 kitchens fitted the median is £220 per square metre, and half of them land between £165 and £300. A week with a sample on the units beats an hour in a showroom.