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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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 day is built around that window.

Georgian and early Victorian terrace, Victorian terrace, 1960s council block and student HMO conversion. Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. The day is planned backwards from the hall. That is the shape of the day.

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. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. Landlord and HMO work here wants a hard-wearing, easily replaced run, not a book-matched island.

Rooflights along a side return mean the worktop is lit from directly above all day, which shows every ripple in a surface and every gap at a scribe. 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. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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.

A let property is specified for durability and for a fixed window, and both of those are legitimate reasons to choose differently. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.