Kitchen worktops in Blackheath Standard

Yes. Two very different jobs sit side by side: modest Victorian terraces with back-addition galleys, and the Span-designed 1960s houses around Vanbrugh Park where kitchens are compact, planned to the millimetre and open to the living space through a serving gap. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. Two hours is the realistic figure.

Victorian terrace, 1930s semi and 1960s Span estate at Vanbrugh Park. The window sits in the middle of the run over the sink, and its board and cill set the limit on how tall an upstand can be. The units are often 1970s or 80s and only around 500mm deep, so a standard 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors and drawer fronts need checking against it. What is under the old top is the real question.

The Span courtyards are car-free with communal parking set back from the houses, so it is a barrow or carry across paving; the Victorian streets have permit bays and nothing else. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. On the Span houses keep to slim profiles and modest overhangs — the original joinery and window lines are tight and a chunky mitred edge reads wrong immediately.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Corners get their own pieces. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. The wall has to be ready. 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.