Kitchen worktops in Longford

Yes. A handful of old cottages and inn-adjacent properties with very small kitchens, exposed beams and uneven floors. Single runs of 2m to 2.5m with everything undercounter. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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.

17th and 18th century cottage, listed coaching-inn stock and 20th century ribbon housing. Cottage terraces have no hall to speak of and the front door opens almost straight into the room, which makes the carry easier and the protection harder. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly.

Frontages sit directly on the Bath Road opposite the airport perimeter fence, with heavy commercial traffic passing and effectively no residential parking. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing states a maximum length and the shop honours it.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all. Low ceilings and beams mean you cannot upend a slab once you are inside, so it comes in flat and gets set in one movement.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. 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 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.

One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Recut time comes out of the access window. 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.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Exposed structure means the back edge is not a straight line at all, and a scribe of fifteen or twenty millimetres across a run is normal. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Geometry first, then the saw.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Polishing a piece that cannot reach the room wastes a day.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. Pieces are stood on edge for the turns and carried flat for the straights, and that sequence is agreed before anything comes off the van. Settlement is packed out, never levered out.