Kitchen worktops in Raynes Park

Yes. The interwar semi is the standard unit: kitchen at the back with a small breakfast room next to it, and the usual project is knocking the two together to make an L with a peninsula facing the garden doors. Runs are typically 2.7m to 3.4m with a return of about 1.8m. 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. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is.

1930s semi, Edwardian terrace and 1960s low-rise flat. An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. 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. Levelled first, then set, then sealed.

Most houses have a drive or hardstanding, which makes staging easy, but the railway bridge and the level crossings on the Kingston side determine which way a long van can approach. Side gates are usually just over 800mm, so a slab travels edge-on down the flank. 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. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. Out and in happen along the same protected route.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Old top out Tuesday, tenant in on Friday. 1930s houses almost always have a chimney breast or a flue in the corner of the old kitchen, so the return leg needs a notched back edge rather than a straight cut.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone. 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. A straight swap is the exception in an older room. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units stay, so the flat is usable that evening. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. 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. 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. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. A side gate hung to open outward against a fence post is narrower in use than it measures, and lifting the gate off its hinges is usually the quickest win on the route. 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. The van stands for both movements, not just the delivery.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. Carried once, and carried properly.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The back door frequently opens straight into the kitchen, which is the best carry route in the house and the one people forget to mention. A run crossing from the original room into the extension is packed to one plane before the stone is offered up. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.