Kitchen worktops in Frognal

Yes. Big detached and semi-detached houses where the kitchen is a large rear room or a purpose-built extension, so you are specifying a 4m-plus perimeter with a full island and often a separate utility or pantry run. Clients here more often want the same stone carried across island, worktops and a full-height splashback. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. One movement off the van starts with how it went on.

large detached Victorian villa, Arts and Crafts house, Edwardian house and 1930s block. Inter-war purpose-built blocks have curved external walls and steel windows, so a run along an outside wall is following a genuine curve rather than a bow. The lift, if there is one, is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a tight turn at every half-landing - so pieces get cut deliberately shorter than the slab allows and the kitchen is designed with more joins than it strictly needs. The bench proves it before the van moves.

Wide but steep roads with in-and-out drives, so vehicle access to the door is usually good and the constraint is the long gravel drive and the steps up to the entrance rather than the parking. A few houses have gated entrances too narrow for a long-wheelbase van. Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. Full-height splashbacks and island returns mean batch-matching matters more here than access does, so reserve slabs from one block and lay them out before cutting.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. A waterfall leg is cut in sequence off its own top. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Access confirmed rather than assumed. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Nothing is payable in advance of the template. This is a logistics job before it is a stone job, and the lift car is usually the single biggest constraint on the design. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. Undermount cut-outs are polished before anything leaves.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. 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 back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.