Kitchen worktops in Selsdon

Yes. Built largely as a 1930s estate, so the semis share a footprint with a small rear kitchen that is usually extended to the side or rear for a kitchen-diner with a peninsula. The detached houses on the higher roads run to proper islands and separate utilities. 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. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job.

1930s estate semi, 1930s detached, post-war Selsdon Vale housing and bungalow. The original kitchen was a small rear room with a larder and a back door, and nearly all of them have since been opened into the dining room. 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 structure this old is worked with, not corrected.

Wide inter-war roads with front drives and space to unload, but the ground rises steeply towards Selsdon Wood and some driveways climb hard from the kerb. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection goes down along it first.

Worktop installation, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house. Steep front drives here are the recurring nuisance, because a loaded trolley wants to run away downhill and we end up hand-carrying pieces we could otherwise wheel.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. 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. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. 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. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened.