Stone worktops in Roehampton

Yes. Roehampton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW15. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Whatever the standing allows, the stone leaves that van finished, because every edge, cut-out and internal radius is machined at the works and none of it is open to reconsideration at the kerb. The face is uncovered once, and that once is at handover. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The hot water cylinder sits in a cupboard opening off the kitchen or the landing above it, and the pipework to it drops through the corner of the room. Kitchens in this stock are compact and worked hard, so the surface is chosen for indifference rather than for attention: quartz where consistency matters, sintered stone where heat and scratching are daily events. Seen from both sides, the figure has to run continuously. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. Every notch and every scribe is machined into the piece before it leaves the works, and a hard sintered surface is the least forgiving of a tight internal corner, so one is always cut with a generous radius. Movement in a stone needs length to read as anything at all.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. That caps the longest piece, and a run split into two lengths nests differently on the slab, which moves the yield and moves the figure with it. A remnant worth keeping rides back on the van rather than to a skip. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. A granite kitchen ends its day with a sealer, and a sealer wants a dry face and a quiet hour afterwards, so that hour is written into the day rather than borrowed from it. Stone arrives finished, because a kerb is not a polishing shop.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. A shape like that nests kindly on a slab, so more of what gets bought ends up on the units and the rate per square metre behaves much as the brochure says it will. Every return end is another polished face to pay for. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. A hob dropped into the middle of a length puts sustained warmth at the lip of a cut-out, and an engineered surface will yellow there across ten years where a natural one takes it without comment. A tight inside corner is where brittle material gives up. Send the run lengths, a photograph of each corner so we can see the boxings, and tell us how the kitchen is used day to day. Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. That changes which questions are worth asking about the stone, because somebody staying put wants to know how a honed face marks in five years and somebody selling wants to know how it photographs next spring. The guarantee is only useful to whoever can find it.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. A run that sits under strong sun for hours every afternoon suits a surface built to be stable in daylight, because a resin-bound stone is made for indoor use and sustained sunlight is the one thing it was never designed around. The wall decides the scribe and the scribe decides the depth.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. A deep scribe eats into the back of the piece, which is quietly important on a stone with directional figure, since the pattern moves backwards as that depth comes off. Sealing suits stone that drinks; nothing else needs it.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. Where a seam becomes unavoidable the choice of stone starts to matter, because a fine even speckle closes a joint almost invisibly and a broad vein simply will not. Thinner stone carries easily and asks for continuous support.

A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. Sintered stone at twelve millimetres weighs roughly half what thirty millimetre granite weighs, so a punishing route can genuinely rule one material in and another out. Vein direction is settled before the slab is broken into pieces.