Kitchen worktops in Victoria Park

Yes. Larger period houses facing the park, most already fully renovated, with kitchens in a rear or side-return extension and a proper island of 2.5-3m alongside a 4m run. Clients here usually want matching stone on the island and a full-height splashback behind the hob. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Victorian terrace, Victorian villa, Georgian terrace and conversion flat. The only window is in the side wall facing into the side return, so the room reads darker than its size and the worktop is doing much of the reflecting. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged.

The streets around the village are permit-only and narrow with parking both sides, and the park roads restrict through traffic. Houses have front paths and steps, and many have side access to the rear which is worth using rather than going through the hall. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The saw never sees a length the hall will not take.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The spares are cut while the slab is still open. Island and run cut from the same block is the expectation here, so reserve the slabs together and lay the veining out before cutting rather than after.

Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Support first, stone second. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Machined to the real line. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A repeated specification comes off one batch. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Cut oversize on purpose, every time.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. 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. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The route is walked before the first lift.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. Sink and hob seated and sealed before we go.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. One kept offcut saves a whole flat later.