Kitchen worktops in St Quintin Park

Yes. The St Quintin streets are later and lower density than the stucco to the south, so kitchens are ground floor at the rear with a side return that has usually been infilled to give an L of about 3.4m plus 2.2m, and bifolds onto a proper garden. Because the ground floor is level with the garden rather than sunk, appliances and worktops go straight in through the back rather than round the front. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Two trips off the van means two chances to catch a corner.

Edwardian estate terrace, Arts and Crafts influenced semi, interwar cottage housing and small modern infill. Many of these had a bathroom or a WC built onto the far end of the addition, so the room now ends at a stud wall rather than at the original brickwork. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. What the shell demands is solved in the shop, not the kitchen.

Wider streets and front gardens mean you can generally get a van reasonably close, but the front paths have steps and low gate posts and the side alleys between houses are frequently under 800mm clear. If the rear route is on, use it; if not, everything goes down a hallway with a stair spindle at the far end. Where the garden is level and the back door is wide the pieces get staged outside on trestles and brought in one at a time as the fitters are ready for them. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The hall is cleared before the first piece comes off the trolley.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. Check the side alley clear width at template - an 800mm gap will not pass a 900mm deep island top no matter how it is angled.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Emptying the room belongs to the keyholder, not the crew. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The only window is in the side wall facing into the side return, so the room reads darker than its size and the worktop is doing much of the reflecting. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. The overhang is cut with its support already sized.