Kitchen worktops in Streatham Common

Yes. Bigger houses on the slopes above the common support proper family kitchens with a 4m run, a 2.5m island and a utility off the back, often with a range cooker needing a full-height stone splashback. Ceiling heights allow tall wall units, so the panel behind the hob is a substantial piece in its own right. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns.

Large Edwardian semi, Victorian villa, 1930s detached and Interwar block. Half-landings mean the back of the house sits at a slightly different level from the front, and a knocked-through kitchen crosses that line. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.

Roads rise steeply away from the common with stepped front gardens and long paths, so the carry involves several steps up before the front door. Parking is easier than on the high road but the gradient makes trolley work risky when wet. A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it.

Worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. Full-height splashback panels behind a range need the flue and bracket positions confirmed first, because a 900mm tall panel with a badly placed cutout cannot be salvaged.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. Scribe to the wall rather than stretch the panel. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One person is responsible for the door that morning. 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.

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. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. 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. A forced back edge cracks weeks later.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. The rear wall of the addition carries both the back door and the window, which leaves very little unbroken wall for a run to sit against. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. A bowed wall gets measured at three heights first.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. The original larder or store cupboard usually survives in a corner, and that alcove is deeper than the units and squarer than the walls around it. A full-height panel in a chimney recess is templated as a trapezium, since that recess is square in neither direction. Cut from the same slab run as the tops.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The hall is the only way in and out for whoever lives there, so it is cleared and then kept clear for as long as pieces are moving. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.