Kitchen worktops in North Cray

Yes. Low-density and semi-rural — larger detached houses with big kitchen-breakfast rooms and utility rooms, plus a handful of old cottages with beams, uneven walls and kitchens fitted into former outbuildings. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. You are told before you commit to a date.

18th and 19th-century cottage, interwar detached, postwar detached and green-belt edge housing. Lime plaster over rubble moves in and out enough that a single long panel will show a gap somewhere along its length. Islands here regularly run longer than a slab, so the join is nested to sit over an internal gable and positioned so it does not run through the hob cut-out, and on a heavily veined stone we nest the island and the back run together so the movement relates across the room. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

Country-lane approaches with no pavement in places, gravel drives and gated entrances; easy to park but the last stretch to the door is usually loose surface. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Once the cut-outs are machined there is no going back on it.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Gravel drives and long approaches make a barrow useless — plan on carrying and take the boards.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. 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 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.

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. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak. 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.