Worktops in Streatham Common

Yes. Streatham Common is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW16. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. 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. 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. The offcut is yours if you want it and ours if you do not. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Internal walls are lath on timber studs while the flank walls are brick, so two walls in the same kitchen take a fixing completely differently. 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 compact kitchen puts the band ahead of the metreage. 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. 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. Reach across an unsupported span is a thickness question.

A meter cupboard set into the hall wall narrows the run at exactly the height a carried piece travels. 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. Thinner stone carries easily and asks for continuous support. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. A sealer needs a dry face and a quiet hour after it.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. 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 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. 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.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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 pale honed face earns its keep in a room short of daylight. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

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. 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. Speckle hides the resin line a mitre leaves behind. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. The maintenance budget and the household budget buy differently.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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. Every notch is machined on the bench and none on site.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. 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.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. 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. Many were built with a solid sub-floor to the rear rooms, so the kitchen floor is concrete and level while the front of the house is suspended timber. The alcoves either side of a breast break the run into short pieces, and short pieces are exactly where buying a full slab outright starts to beat buying stone by the metre. Cool artificial light turns a warm stone grey.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. 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.