Worktop installation in New Cross

Yes. New Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. 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. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. 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. The slow parts are slow for a reason. Landlord and HMO work here wants a hard-wearing, easily replaced run, not a book-matched island.

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. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. 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. Batching several kitchens together is the one situation where buying a whole slab is cheaper per kitchen rather than more expensive. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Sealed before we leave.

The step or level change between the original room and the return is real, and the units need packing before stone goes across it. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. Where the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first.