Kitchen worktops in Chislehurst

Yes. Large detached houses where the kitchen is the main family room: islands of 2.5-3.5m, breakfast bar overhangs needing support, integrated wine fridges and a separate utility with its own worktop run. Rear extensions with lantern roofs are the norm on the 1930s stock. 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. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. Nothing here is added after the fact.

Edwardian villa, 1930s detached, 1960s executive detached and conservation-area cottage. Houses of this period came with generous garages and utility rooms, so a second short run of stone is often part of the same job. Most of these have a side passage and a back door, so a full-length piece can usually reach the kitchen without being cut down, and the piece sizing is driven by the slab rather than the route. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

Mostly good. Wide roads, block-paved or gravel driveways and space to unload off the highway, though several houses on the common side have a long carry from the drive round to a rear extension entrance. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Conservation-area jobs here often have listed or controlled external works, so we do the template after the extension is fully closed in and plastered, not off drawings.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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.