Kitchen worktops in Ealing Common

Yes. Big villas with the kitchen in the lower ground or rear return, usually extended full width onto the garden. Generous islands, a butler's pantry run and a taste for heavily veined marble-look quartz. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Large Victorian villa, Edwardian villa, 1930s mansion flat and conversion flat. Original joinery is deep and stands proud of the plaster, so the run is plotted to the units rather than to the wall behind them. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. That is the shape of the day.

Streets around the common are residents-only permit bays. Villas have deep front paths and a flight of steps up to a raised ground floor, and driveways are rare. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop templating, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. 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. Those front steps mean every piece gets lifted over three or four risers, which is worth two extra hands rather than trying it with one.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.