Kitchen worktops in Upper Norwood

Yes. Substantial villas on the hill with large but oddly shaped kitchens, often in a lower ground floor or rear return with a step down and a low window head. The Beulah Hill detached properties run to full island kitchens with utility and pantry; the conversions are small and constrained. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Straps and battens are chosen for lifting, not just for transit.

large Victorian villa, villa converted to flats, Beulah Hill detached and 1930s mansion flats. Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. A wall that leans is machined to the lean.

The steepest streets in the borough, with houses set well above or below road level and long flights of front steps. Lower ground floor kitchens mean carrying stone down as well as along. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary. Low ceilings in lower ground floor kitchens mean you cannot tilt a long piece to get it round a corner, so anything over 2.4m gets a designed joint before it leaves the shop.

Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Undersides are polished where the piece is seen from below. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. 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. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Real dimensions go on the cut list, not nominal ones.