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. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

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 car is the single biggest price driver here. That is what the itemised lines are for.

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. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch. 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.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. Shape first, area second. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction. 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.