Kitchen worktops in New Eltham

Yes. Wider interwar plots than Eltham proper with more detached houses and chalet bungalows, so kitchens are square rather than long, usually reworked into a U with a peninsula. A fair number of bungalow kitchens have low ceilings and window sills that sit close to the worktop. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained afterwards. 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, interwar chalet bungalow, 1960s detached and postwar infill. These were built with generous circulation, so an island or a peninsula fits in a room that would be too tight in a house of the same floor area. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. The old top hid it; the new one will not.

Good: nearly every house has a drive or hardstanding, the roads are wide and turning space is easy, with pinch points only around the station and the shops. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered. Low sills under the sink window are common in the bungalows, check upstand height at template stage or you'll be cutting on site.

A U shape uses more linear metres than people expect, and the two returns rarely nest together, so a second slab is a genuine possibility. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The strip-out is the part worth planning. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A rolling programme loses a flat to one missing key. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Two runs and a return into a rear extension is the pattern, and the return is the piece that never nests neatly on a slab. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A single day, planned properly.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. With three walls in play the chance of one of them being out of square is high, and the template has to carry all three angles. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles.

Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. A side passage and a back door mean the stone rarely has to come through the house, which changes the job more than most people expect. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. What comes off tells you what goes on.