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. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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.

large detached Victorian villa, Arts and Crafts house, Edwardian house and 1930s block. Balcony access and long communal corridors are often the carry route, and both are narrower than they look with a piece on edge. If the diagonal of the car will not take a full-length piece, the worktop gets designed around the lift rather than around the room, which means extra joins, worse nesting on the slab and sometimes a second slab bought to produce the same kitchen in more pieces. You see it before you commit to anything.

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. 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. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. You see that figure before we template, not after.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. 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 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. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. No installed rate per square metre, because it is not a real number. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak. 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.