Kitchen worktops in The Wrythe

Yes. Small older cottages and terraces with genuinely tight kitchens, often under 2.4m of usable run once the back door and boiler are in, so the priority is squeezing a dishwasher in and getting a slim breakfast bar rather than an island. 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. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

Victorian cottage, Victorian terrace, post-war infill housing and low-rise flats. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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. Decided before fabrication starts.

Narrow lanes with tight bends left over from the old village layout, parking on both sides and front doors opening straight onto the footway. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Nested for the job in front of us. Where a run is under 2.4m we can usually cut it and the upstands from a single offcut, which keeps a small kitchen in real stone instead of pushing the client to laminate.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Height change is checked before we cut. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Machined to the real line. 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.

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. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction. 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.