Worktops in Tulse Hill

Yes. Tulse Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW2. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. A sealer needs a dry face and a quiet hour after it. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Ceilings are high enough that an extractor over the island has a long drop, and its position is fixed before the island top is templated. A kitchen of this size runs to two slabs almost every time, and once a second slab is in the quotation the question shifts from rate per square metre to which slab you actually want to live with. A tall room carries a thick edge; a low one does not. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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. The narrowest return in the kitchen is its weakest stone.

A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. 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. Speckle forgives a joint that a sweeping figure never would. 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. 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. Wet stone reads darker, which is why colour is judged indoors.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop installation. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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. The island is usually what turns one slab into two. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Where tenants change often, a surface with nothing to seal wins.

Handles on opposing runs meet in the middle of the aisle, so a deep edge profile specified on both sides takes width out of the standing space twice over. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. 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. Porous or sealed is a decision about the next ten years. 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. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. 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. What the cleaner uses is part of the specification.

Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A large villa has wide doors, a generous hall and somewhere to park, so the joins that go in are chosen for layout rather than forced by the route. 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. Honed hides the dust an older house makes all year.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. 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. A short upstand shows a fragment of pattern, never a run of it.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. 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. Seen from both sides, the figure has to run continuously.