Kitchen worktops in Streatham Vale

Yes. Uniform interwar semis with rear kitchens roughly 2.5m by 3m, and the standard project is a small rear extension or a knock into the dining room giving an L with a breakfast bar. Islands are rare because the extended room is used as a dining space instead. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

1930s semi, Interwar terrace and Postwar infill. A detached house of this age has a drive, a side path and a back door, so access is rarely the constraint and the design can follow the room. What catches people out is the junction between the old floor and the extension floor, which is rarely at the same level, so a run carrying across it needs the units packed before stone goes on. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Streets are quieter and largely uncontrolled compared with the Streatham high road, and many houses have hardstanding or a dropped kerb. The railway line and the limited crossings mean the approach route needs checking, and side alleys are around 780mm at the gate. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. These houses almost all still have the original back-boiler flue or a boxed vertical duct in the kitchen corner, so allow for a notched return leg as a matter of course.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. Material runs from £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines rather than rolled into one figure.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Units kept, surface changed. Tell us the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the day rather than found on it.