Kitchen worktops in Bedford Park

Yes. Kitchens sit in the original rear returns or half-basements, and the brief is almost always period-correct: hand-painted in-frame units, a slim 20mm profile rather than a chunky edge, honed or leathered granite, and a Belfast sink cut-out. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. Two hours is the realistic figure.

1870s-1880s Queen Anne revival, Arts and Crafts detached and Edwardian infill. Half-landings mean the back of the house sits at a slightly different level from the front, and a knocked-through kitchen crosses that line. Alcoves either side of the breast are rarely the same width and rarely parallel, so each one is templated as its own piece with its own scribe. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Conservation area controls mean skips and scaffold need permits, frontages are gravel with hedges rather than hardstanding, and the side gates are too narrow for a slab. Most stone goes in through the front door and down 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. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted. Listed and locally listed fabric means you cannot chase the wall for an upstand, so scribing to 140-year-old lime plaster is the actual job.

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. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. 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.