Worktops in Telegraph Hill

Yes. Telegraph Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE14. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. Thirty millimetre stone unloads slowly and thin stone does not. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. There is usually an island, and the island takes the liveliest part of the stone while the perimeter is allowed to stay quiet, which is a decision made at the slab rather than on paper. Long narrow rooms want a pale face at the working end. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. 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. Speckle hides the resin line a mitre leaves behind.

Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. 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. The seam is planned on the layout, not discovered in the room. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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. The packaging and the spent cartridges leave with the crew.

Not really, and claiming otherwise would cost nothing and mean nothing. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. It reflects the local housing rather than any difference in the work. It is quoted, cut and fitted here the same way it is anywhere else on the patch. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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. Several kitchens at once should come off a single batch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. The entry end of the range is real stone, not a compromise.

The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. 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. The waterfall leg is a whole extra piece of stone. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. 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. Every notch is machined on the bench and none on site. Send the island dimensions and the perimeter run lengths, say whether a waterfall end is wanted, and tell us which slab you would like reserved. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. 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. Repairability is a fair question to ask before choosing.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. Where a seam becomes unavoidable the choice of stone starts to matter, because a fine even speckle closes a joint almost invisibly and a broad vein simply will not. The pieces either side of a break come off adjoining slab.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. A lantern or a rooflight over the room throws raking light across every horizontal surface, which shows a lipped join from the far side of the kitchen. 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. Quartz, granite and sintered stone answer three different rooms.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. An island is the piece that decides whether one slab covers the kitchen or two, and a second slab arrives as a step in the figure rather than a gentle slope. Finished ends cost by the metre, however short the run is.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A range sitting in a chimney recess is common, and the flanking pieces are cut with the manufacturer clearance built into the template. Kitchens of this size nearly always run to two slabs, and once a second slab is in the quotation the question changes from price per square metre to which slab you actually want. Short pieces are the argument for buying a slab outright.