Kitchen worktops in Old Coulsdon

Yes. Higher ground above the town with a quieter mix of detached houses and bungalows around the green. Kitchens are generally square rooms of a decent size where owners add a small island or a large peninsula, and downstairs utility space is often carved from an attached garage. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. Van to door is the distance that matters.

1930s detached, 1950s semi, post-war cul-de-sac housing and bungalow. The kitchen sits at the back with a door to the garden and a window over the sink, and both are on the wall the run wants. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Cul-de-sacs with turning heads and generous drives make loading easy, but the area sits at the top of a long climb, and in cold weather the approach roads are the first to ice. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. A laminate run comes out easier than stone goes in.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Chosen against the doors that are staying. Bungalow and single-storey work here means no stairs, so the limiting factor is doorway width rather than piece length, and internal doors often have to come off their hinges.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Disposal is named, not assumed. 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.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. 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 layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.

The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The old larder leaves behind a thick cold shelf and a vent brick through the outer wall, and both have to go before that wall reads flat. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Nothing is cut in the room if the shop could do it.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Same footprint, different tolerances.

The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.