Many of our customers arrive after choosing their kitchen at one the Big Shed kitchen retailers. Most of the big names are now offering quartz worktops, if not granite, alongside their units. Once they have chosen their kitchen units, our clients have gone on to look at the worktop offering from the same kitchen supplier. I guess we never see the ones who simply buy units and worktops together and all goes swimmingly.

But we do see a substantial number who, having started out with “Big Shed” worktops, end up with an Affordable Granite worktop installation. And it’s pretty frequently that we hear something like this: “I don’t know why we didn’t go to a granite specialist for the worktops in the first place!” Just this week a customer said, “We bought our appliances from a third-party company, but we didn’t really think about doing the same thing with the worktops.”

I think that this sort of thought is not uncommon; people assume that it is best to get the worktops from the kitchen supplier. I can understand this where a high-end kitchen company is producing bespoke units for you and they are project-managing the whole job. Kitchen showrooms with handmade units may sell worktops at a relatively small proportion of the overall kitchen cost, but this is not normally the case with the mass market type kitchen companies. But whether you buy your kitchen units high-end or big shed, there are many advantages in buying granite worktops directly from somewhere like Affordable Granite. It is small fabricator – local worktop installers – who are the real experts in solid stone worktop manufacture and installation.

The reason why our recent customer ended up coming to us was frustration around templating and fitting. The kitchen company fitted their units but then dallied giving a template date. When asked about fitting the company said that the worktop installation would be a further four weeks from an already delayed template. Like many of our customers, our clients had already been without a working kitchen for some time, and were surprised, not to say desperate, to find they would have to wait so long.

There is absolutely no reason why the time between templating and installation should be anything like four weeks! Here at AG we template and install in general within a working week, and often only 3-4 working days later. At peak times and for distant installations this can be slightly longer. Ceramic, porcelain and sintered stones (like Dekton) can take a little longer too, particularly if there are bespoke or mitred profiles to manufacture. Even in all of these circumstances we are likely to install within a week to 10 days maximum. That is just one benefit of using local, specialist stone worktop installers.

Are there advantages, though, to using a national kitchen company for your worktops? What other factors are there? Coverage of the whole country is no bad thing in itself country; let’s look at some of the benefits of using a small fabricator / local installers and, in particular, what Affordable Granite can do for you!

This page links through to a sequence of blogs which look at just some of the reasons for coming to a local granite and quartz worktops specialist. Local installers for the win! Just click here to read on.

Part II – National and Large or Local and Small?

Part III – Kitchen Company or Worktop Specialist?

We are Affordable Granite, the leading granite installer in Surrey, Sussex and across the South East. We aim to be the best – best in helpfulness and customer service, best in quality of installation, best in health and safety standards, best in overall value for money. For questions, queries and quotes connected with any aspect of worktop installation or kitchen design, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 01293 863992 or by email on sales@affordablegranite.co.uk/ .