Kitchen worktops in Chiswick

Yes. Most of the work is retrofit into side-return or full-width rear extensions, so the kitchen is a long single-wall galley of 4m to 5m facing an island of 2.8m to 3.4m. Above the shops and in the period conversions you get the opposite problem: a 2.2m galley with the boiler still on the wall. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. We would rather ask than guess.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian villa, 1930s mansion block and 2010s riverside apartment. Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. The quote separates the joins the run needs from the joins the route forces, because they are different decisions with the same price. That is what the itemised lines are for.

Controlled parking on effectively every street, no driveways on the terraces, and the final approach is 20mph residential roads off the A4 or A316 with school-run congestion morning and afternoon. Loading needs a suspension or an early slot. 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. You see that figure before we template, not after.

Worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop design & quotation, in that order. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so. Nearly every job here has an island longer than a standard slab, so where the joint lands gets argued out at template rather than left to the workshop.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. The drawing leaves site complete. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template. 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.