Kitchen worktops in Peckham Rye

Yes. Larger houses facing the common, many double-fronted with a wide rear room, so kitchens run to a 4m back wall plus a 2.4m island, and the old scullery or cellar head gets converted into a boot room or pantry with a short secondary top. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

Victorian double-fronted villa, Victorian terrace and Edwardian semi. Original joinery is deep and stands proud of the plaster, so the run is plotted to the units rather than to the wall behind them. 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. The age of the house sets the pace of it.

Roads around the common are wide enough to unload but are controlled parking with residents' bays; front paths are long with a step up, and the double-fronted houses have a generous hall that takes a full piece without drama. A Victorian hall arch sits lower than the ceiling either side of it, and it is the point a piece carried on edge meets first. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.

Worktop installation, in that order. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. One of the few places nearby where a 3m single piece genuinely fits through the front door, so the joint decisions are aesthetic rather than forced.

Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. 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. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. A curved bay or a canted corner turns up more often here than people expect, and a curve is templated and cut, never bent. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A hob cut-out and the floor penetration feeding it have to land over the same cabinet, and where they do not it is the stone that gets redrawn rather than the pipework. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The last piece in has the least tolerance left.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Ceilings are high enough that the wall units sit low against them, which leaves a tall band of wall above the worktop doing nothing. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The kitchen is a rear service room with a scullery and a larder off it, and both have usually survived as separate spaces. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.