Kitchen worktops in North Cray

Yes. Low-density and semi-rural, larger detached houses with big kitchen-breakfast rooms and utility rooms, plus a handful of old cottages with beams, uneven walls and kitchens fitted into former outbuildings. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. It is one line among the others, and it is honest.

18th and 19th-century cottage, interwar detached, postwar detached and green-belt edge housing. A range or an Aga in an original recess is usually immovable, so the run is designed around it and the clearances come from the appliance. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. The bench proves it before the van moves.

Country-lane approaches with no pavement in places, gravel drives and gated entrances; easy to park but the last stretch to the door is usually loose surface. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Gravel drives and long approaches make a barrow useless, plan on carrying and take the boards.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction. 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.