Kitchen worktops in Sanderstead

Yes. Large detached houses on sloping plots with kitchens at the back looking down the valley, often with a rear extension stepping down to garden level. Islands of 2.4m plus, separate utilities and second ovens are common in the specification. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. A crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

1930s detached, 1960s detached, large post-war house and 1980s close housing. A detached house of this age has a drive, a side path and a back door, so access is rarely the constraint and the design can follow the room. 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. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

Hilly roads with steep, often curved driveways and split-level frontages, so getting close to the door is fine but the last few metres involve a slope or a set of steps. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The maximum piece is written on the drawing in millimetres.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Split-level rear extensions mean two worktop heights in one room, and clients often want a continuous stone look across the step, which has to be resolved as two separate runs with a deliberate break.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Access is checked against the longest piece first. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Upstands leave the bench in lengths, not as one run. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined 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. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. An agent forwarding a drawing is not approving it. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Nesting follows the route, not the other way round.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Radius first, polish second, joins nowhere near.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The kitchen door opens inwards into the middle of a run, so the usable length of that wall stops well short of the corner. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Overhangs get brackets before anyone leans on them.