Kitchen worktops in Lower Sydenham

Yes. Flatter ground by the river with postwar estate housing and interwar semis; kitchens are modest rear rooms with a back door, standard 600mm units and runs around 2.4m to 3m, and the work is straight replacement rather than redesign. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.

postwar estate housing, 1930s semi, Victorian cottage terrace and industrial-edge conversion. The floor is a concrete slab screeded before the units existed, so it falls slightly and consistently towards the back door. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.

Wide roads, industrial estate access and genuine turning space for a long van, one of the easier parts of Lewisham to deliver into, though estate parking courts get blocked. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. Old material is stacked outside rather than left along the route.

Worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. Simple rectangular rooms and easy parking, so the only real catch is 1970s carcasses that have gone out of level.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run. 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. 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 notch is machined, never ground in later. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Remakes for our error are ours to carry. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. These were built with generous room sizes for their date, so a peninsula fits where a speculative house of the same age would not take one. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. The units have settled with the floor and get re-levelled.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. The overhang is cut with its support already sized.