Kitchen worktops in Roe Green

Yes. The garden village cottages have genuinely small kitchens with low ceilings and original window positions that cannot be moved, so runs are short at 2.1m to 2.7m and every centimetre of return matters. Owners tend to spend on a small area of good material rather than on quantity, and appliance choice is limited by the depth available. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

1918 garden village cottage, 1930s semi on the fringe and post-war infill. Lime plaster over rubble moves in and out enough that a single long panel will show a gap somewhere along its length. The old island top is frequently sitting on units that were never fixed down, which is fine for laminate and not for stone. What is under the old top is the real question.

Narrow lanes, grass verges and shared front paths through the conservation area, with limited parking and no driveways on the original cottages, so the carry is on foot across grass and paving. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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 strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop design & quotation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Short runs in a conservation cottage leave no room for error, so a template of the actual opening beats any drawing of nominal unit widths.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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 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 quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template. 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.