Kitchen worktops in Petts Wood

Yes. Very consistent stock from the inter-war estate: the original kitchen is a small rear room, and almost every job is a rear or side-return extension turning it into an L-shaped kitchen-diner with a peninsula. Because the houses repeat, the layouts repeat, typically a 3.6m rear run plus a 2.1m return. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

1930s mock-Tudor semi, 1930s detached, 1950s infill and chalet bungalow. Rear windows are wide and low with a deep tiled cill, and that cill decides how tall the upstand behind the sink can be. 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. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged.

Front drives on most houses and a side passage on the semis, but the side passages are narrow and often have a gas meter box or bin store in them, so slabs usually go in through the front. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Four hands or eight is settled before the tail lift drops.

Worktop installation, 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 fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. The estate is under an Article 4 style design control on the frontages, so the constraint is scheduling around the builder finishing the extension rather than the fit itself.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

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. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. 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. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Rear extensions on these sit on shallow foundations, and the crack at the junction with the original wall tells you which way it has moved. 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.