Kitchen worktops in Old Malden

Yes. Older cottages around the church with tiny kitchens under 2.4m of run, and interwar semis on the surrounding roads that mostly get a rear extension across the full width giving a 4m run with an island of 1.8m to 2.1m and bifolds onto the garden. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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.

Victorian cottage, 1930s semi, 1930s detached and postwar infill. These were built with a separate dining room, and most have had the wall between it and the kitchen taken out with a steel put in above. 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. Levelled first, then set, then sealed.

The area drops towards the Hogsmill, so several roads are on a noticeable slope with sunken driveways; otherwise off-street parking is the norm and side passages are wide enough for a trolley. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves.

Worktop installation, in that order. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. Sloping plots mean the extension floor and the original floor rarely match, so worktop heights get set from the units, never from the finished floor.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The join is the last thing finished. 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. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A day out of use, told to whoever lives there. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. A side return glazed over gives the room a second aspect and a second floor level, because the old external threshold is still under the finish. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. Carried once, and carried properly.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The kitchen door opens inwards into the middle of a run, so the usable length of that wall stops well short of the corner. 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.

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. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Money does not move until the template is done. 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. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.