Myatt's Fields worktops
The kitchens we meet in Myatt's Fields
There is a reason we ask about the building before we talk about stone, and stone worktop supply and fitting in Myatt's Fields is a good illustration of it. Victorian terraces around the park have narrow rear additions where the kitchen stays a galley of about 2m wide, with the option of opening into the rear reception to gain a return. Rebuilt estate housing nearby has contemporary kitchens sized to modern regulations with an island only in the larger family units. We would rather find an out of square wall at survey than on fitting day, so the survey is thorough and unhurried.
Where the external walls have been overboarded to insulate them the room is fifty millimetres smaller than the drawing and the board sounds hollow throughout. Edge profile is the last few millimetres anybody ever touches, and it is charged along the length rather than across the area, which is why it lands as a surprise. Heat tolerance is a property of the material, not a claim about it.
Windows and doors were replaced across whole streets on one programme, so the kitchen window is a plastic frame in the old opening with a deep lined reveal. These kitchens work hard, which argues for surfaces that ask for nothing: engineered stone for its consistency, sintered stone where heat and scratching are daily. Short pieces are the argument for buying a slab outright.
What we are cutting for, here, is Victorian terrace, Rebuilt estate housing and Interwar block. Each of those puts the services somewhere else, and the cut-outs follow.
