Kitchen worktops in Hampton

Yes. Riverside houses with kitchens raised above flood level or set behind a lightwell, small period cottages with sub-2.5m runs, and a large interwar suburban belt inland where the standard job is a rear extension with a 3.6m run and an island of about 2m. 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. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. Nothing here is added after the fact.

Georgian riverside house, Victorian cottage, 1930s semi, postwar detached and modern riverside flats. The party wall is the straightest surface in the house and everything else has moved away from it over a century. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

The riverside road is narrow with limited pull-in and floods on high tides, several houses are reached by a footpath from a shared parking area, while the suburban roads inland have driveways and easy standing. 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. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Appliances on site, not on order. In the flood-prone riverside properties the plinths and carcasses are often raised or moisture-resistant, so worktop heights sit higher than standard - confirm before templating.

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. No installed rate per square metre, because it is not a real number. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.