Kitchen worktops in Park Langley

Yes. Large early-twentieth-century houses built as a garden suburb, with big rear kitchens that were originally servant space, so there is often a scullery, larder and back stair to absorb into one room. Finished kitchens run to a 3m island plus a separate utility and frequently a second prep sink. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. A timed unload is planned into the rack before it leaves.

Edwardian garden-suburb detached, 1920s arts and crafts house, 1930s detached and post-war infill. Floors are boards over joists with a solid floor only in the service rooms, and the two meet somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. Islands here regularly run longer than a slab, so the join is nested to sit over an internal gable and positioned so it does not run through the hob cut-out, and on a heavily veined stone we nest the island and the back run together so the movement relates across the room. The bow in an old wall is cut for, not sanded out.

Wide verged roads with in-and-out drives and plenty of room to unload, but the houses sit well back behind long front paths and several have covenants on frontage alterations. Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. These houses have solid brick internal walls rather than stud, so wall-hung breakfast bars and long unsupported overhangs can actually be fixed properly here instead of needing steel brackets everywhere.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The overhang is cut with its support already sized. Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. 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. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. A day out of use, told to whoever lives there. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. The joins here are chosen rather than forced, so they go where the veining and the gables want them. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Edge work on a return matches edge work on a length.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. The island and the back run are nested together so the movement in the stone relates across the room. Older houses come off the bench with longer scribes.