South Wimbledon worktops
The kitchens we meet in South Wimbledon
If you are weighing up stone worktop supply and fitting in South Wimbledon, the first thing worth knowing is that the building decides more than the brochure does. Small two-storey terraces where the kitchen stays in the original rear outrigger, a single 2.4m to 3m run with the boiler still on the wall and no room for an island. The stock suits landlord refits and first-time-buyer updates, so the usual job is swapping a tired laminate top for a slab and adding upstands rather than moving anything. Guessing at this stage would only put a wrong number in front of you, so we do not do it.
Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. Stone grows and shrinks a little with warmth, which is the reason joints are gapped, upstands are never wedged tight, and nothing is pinned as though it will sit still forever. Two kitchens of one size can differ by double on the stone alone.
There is no back addition on these, so the kitchen is the original rear room and the run is one wall long with a door at each end of it. Alcoves either side of the old breast chop the run into short lengths, and a kitchen made of short lengths is the case where buying a slab outright beats buying the square metres, because the remainder is paid for in both. Open-plan surfaces are furniture before they are work surfaces.
The stock on this patch is Victorian bylaw terrace, Edwardian terrace, Postwar council block and Above-shop flat. Which of those you have decides most of what follows.
