Kitchen worktops in Brook Green

Yes. This is family-house territory with wide plots, so kitchens are the big rear room after a side-return or full-width extension, running 4m plus with a 2.4-3m island and often a second sink in the island. Because the extensions are new build, the walls are square and level, which means single long pieces and mitred waterfall ends are actually achievable rather than aspirational. 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 van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

large late Victorian family terrace, red-brick Edwardian house, mansion flat and Victorian villa converted to flats. The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. The kitchen is usually a long galley in a rear extension or side return, so the run lengths are the first thing we check against slab length, anything beyond roughly three metres either needs a join or a second slab, and that decision alone moves the material figure more than a few extra square metres would. Priced from the building, not from a rate card.

Quiet residential streets with CPZ permit bays and reasonable width, so a van can usually get within 20m, but almost every house has a front path with two or three steps and a tiled Victorian threshold you do not want to chip. Where an extension is still under construction the back garden route via a neighbour or a side gate is often open and is far better than the hall. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Nothing payable until we template. Get in while the extension is still a building site and take the stone through the open rear wall - once the bifolds are glazed you are back to fighting the hallway.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Eased in, never forced. 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.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. 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.