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. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. We would rather ask than guess.

18th and 19th-century cottage, interwar detached, postwar detached and green-belt edge housing. These have been added to over two centuries, so the kitchen is made of two or three walls of different ages and different thicknesses. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

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. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Edge profiles are finished before the stone is ever stood on end.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Cut for the slot, because the slot will not move. 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. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. A plan-angle mitre closes on paper only. 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.

Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. One batch wherever the specification repeats. 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.

Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The kerb decides the start time.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Windows are small and set deep, which leaves the run under them dark and the reveal too deep for a plain square end. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The cut list answers to the way in first.

Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. A piece too long for the stairs is a piece cut twice.