Kitchen worktops in Morden Park

Yes. Garage and side-return infills are the common upgrade rather than large rear extensions, producing a long thin kitchen with cabinets down one side and appliances at the cold end. Utility runs off the kitchen are frequently specified in the same material. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. 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. The old tops have to go somewhere as well.

1930s semi, 1950s council-built house and Postwar bungalow. The step down from the main house into the addition is commonly a hundred to a hundred and fifty millimetres, which gives the kitchen a different floor datum from the rest of the ground floor. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. The wall behind the old top has not been seen in years.

Off-street parking is normal and roads are wide, so the van gets to the door. The pinch point is the side passage into an infill extension, which is often built out to within 700mm of the boundary fence. Grass and gravel will not take a loaded trolley, so a boarded track gets laid from the gate to the door before the first piece moves. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn. Infill extensions are frequently narrower than a standard worktop plus walkway, so confirm the finished internal width before ordering, 600mm depth plus an island is not always possible.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The new pieces are nested, not traced off the old ones. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. An old kitchen has moved, and the stone is cut to that.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The sink is chosen before the cut list is set.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Where the drive is too short for the van the back end overhangs the footway, and a footway is a route people are using rather than spare space. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Access out counts as much as access in.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened.