Worktops in Strand-on-the-Green

Yes. Strand-on-the-Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Colour matched resin is mixed to the slab, not to a chart. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Many have had the ground floor chimney breast removed to gain three hundred millimetres, and the gained strip is newer blockwork standing proud of the old plaster. The kitchen in one of these sits in the back addition and takes its daylight from one end, so the working half of the run is the darker half and a pale stone with a honed or matt face does more there than any colour with depth in it. A kitchen with no window of its own needs tone rather than colour. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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. Short lengths are where a full slab starts to pay for itself.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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. Short pieces nest tighter, and tighter nesting is less stone bought. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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. Thirty millimetre stone unloads slowly and thin stone does not.

Not to any real extent, and it would be easy to imply it was. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop installation and worktop fabrication. It describes the kitchens on this patch, not the work that goes into them. Same quoting, same cutting, same fitting as anywhere else on the patch. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where several kitchens are ordered together the sensible move is to take them all off one batch, because two slabs of the same name bought six months apart will not sit happily in the same building. Order the stone against the room, never against the drawing. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Volume work tends to live at the entry end of the range, and the entry end is genuine stone rather than a compromise, since the lowest supply figure we quote is a sintered surface and not a thin laminate pretending to be one. Several kitchens at once should come off a single batch.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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. A mitre asks the pattern to turn a corner and be believed. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. The narrowest return in the kitchen is its weakest stone. Send the run lengths, say where the sink and hob will sit, and tell us which way the room faces and what lighting is going in above the working run. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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. Buy once where the room will not be touched again for years.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. Which stone belongs on top of all that is a separate question from the building itself, and it is the one with a figure attached, because supply alone runs from £110 to £550 per square metre before a single cut has been made. Porous or not porous is the fork in the road on day one.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. The staircase rises over the back room in a good number of these, so a sloping bulkhead sits over one end of the run and a piece cannot be stood on edge beneath 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. A galley nests efficiently and frees money for better stone.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. The surface is where the money actually moves: across the 181 kitchens fitted the median is £220 per square metre, and half of them land between £165 and £300. Pick the surface for the cooking rather than for the photograph.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. 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. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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. Porous or sealed is a decision about the next ten years.