Kitchen worktops in Selsdon

Yes. Built largely as a 1930s estate, so the semis share a footprint with a small rear kitchen that is usually extended to the side or rear for a kitchen-diner with a peninsula. The detached houses on the higher roads run to proper islands and separate utilities. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. You are told before you commit to a date.

1930s estate semi, 1930s detached, post-war Selsdon Vale housing and bungalow. The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. Walls between the original room and the extension are frequently out of square, which affects the template but not the price; what does affect it is the appliance list, because a drop-in range, an undermount bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a separate drainer are four separately priced cut-outs. Priced from the building, not from a rate card.

Wide inter-war roads with front drives and space to unload, but the ground rises steeply towards Selsdon Wood and some driveways climb hard from the kerb. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. You see that figure before we template, not after.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop templating, 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. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template. Steep front drives here are the recurring nuisance, because a loaded trolley wants to run away downhill and we end up hand-carrying pieces we could otherwise wheel.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. Real angles, not plan angles. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. 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. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Written to be read by whoever is paying. 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.