Kitchen worktops in New Cross

Yes. A lot of houses in multiple occupation and student lets around the college, where kitchens are hard-used single runs of 2.4m to 3m and durability matters more than looks; the remaining family houses have back-addition kitchens with the side return opened up. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not.

Georgian and early Victorian terrace, Victorian terrace, 1960s council block and student HMO conversion. Cornice runs round the head of the wall, so the wall units stop under it and the splashback band is trapped between two things that are not going to move. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Levelled first, then set, then sealed.

The main road junctions are heavy with traffic and red-route restrictions, so unloading happens on the side streets, and many terraces have steps up to a raised front door. Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in.

Worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The prep list is not optional. Landlord and HMO work here wants a hard-wearing, easily replaced run, not a book-matched island.

A galley run down a side-return extension usually measures longer than a slab will give in one length, so a join is designed in from the start rather than discovered. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Left and right alcove pieces are marked and stay marked. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Work between tenancies runs against a fixed date rather than a preference, and stone has a lead time that has to fit inside that window with a few days spare. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The room cleared before the crew arrives. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

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. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A relief that deep changes how the piece is lifted.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The chimney breast is usually still standing with the opening blocked up, and the alcoves either side of it are rarely the same width as each other. 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. Carried once, and carried properly.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Sealed before we leave.

Money does not move until the template is done. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A hundred and forty years of alterations sit under the current kitchen, and the worktop is what has to sit flat on top of all of it. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. The slab is laid out around the awkward piece.