Tooting worktops
The kitchens we meet in Tooting
Every one of the worktop jobs we quote in Tooting starts with the same conversation about what is already in the kitchen and what is staying. Small early cottage-estate houses have compact rear kitchens where a straight 2.7m run and a return is the whole layout, while the larger Victorian terraces off the main roads take a rear infill with a peninsula. Multi-generation households often ask for a second hob run or a separate prep area. If that sounds like guesswork, it is not: it is measured on the day, in your kitchen, before anything is cut.
Where the kitchen has been opened into the living room the opening was trimmed with a steel, and a stub of the old wall was left standing at one end. Hardness and toughness are separate properties, and the surface that laughs off a knife is often the one least willing to survive an unsupported corner. Porous or not porous is the fork in the road on day one.
The hot water cylinder sits in a cupboard opening off the kitchen or the landing above it, and the pipework to it drops through the corner of the room. Where budget leads, the honest saving is in the colour rather than in the thickness, because a thin top over a hard-working kitchen is a false economy. A compact kitchen puts the band ahead of the metreage.
What the kitchens here mostly sit in is Victorian terrace, Edwardian cottage estate house, Above-shop flat and Postwar block. They fail in different places, which is why the survey looks at different things.
