Kitchen worktops in Old Bexley

Yes. The village core has small period cottages with low ceilings, uneven floors and kitchens in single-storey rear outshots, short scribed runs, no islands, while the larger Victorian and interwar houses on the edges have proper kitchen-diners. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. A long walk from the van earns heavier corner protection.

18th-century cottage, Victorian villa, 1930s detached and postwar infill. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The piece is made for the room the builders left.

A narrow conservation-area high street with a level crossing, restricted parking and no rear access to the older cottages, so deliveries have to be timed around the barrier and the school run. 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. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. Waste goes out the way the stone came in, so the route stays clear.

Worktop fabrication and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Chosen against the doors that are staying. In the old cottages, door and beam heights matter as much as widths, a slab on edge won't always clear the lintel.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The gap between tenancies is the whole window. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The overhang is cut with its support already sized.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Machined in the shop, where it belongs.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday.