Kitchen worktops in Holland Park

Yes. Villas here carry full-width lower ground kitchen and family rooms, frequently with two islands or an island plus a separate prep run, and single pieces of 3.6m and up are normal rather than exceptional. Book-matched veined stone on a waterfall island and a matching full-height rear panel is the standard specification, which means slab selection at the yard comes before any cutting. 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 rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Loaded for the carry, not for the van.

Italianate detached and semi-detached villa, large stucco terrace, 1960s-70s architect-designed infill house and gated modern townhouse. A basement is often reached by its own door under the front steps, and that door is smaller than anything else on the route. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out.

Several roads are private or gated with gravel drives and speed humps, and gravel is the enemy of an A-frame trolley, so the load usually has to be carried from the road edge. Where houses have their own side gate to the garden it is worth using it, because the main staircases here are wide but turn twice and the balustrades are frequently listed and cannot be unbolted. Counting hands matters more than counting metres on a staircase, because a piece two people lift off a van still wants three on the flight and a fourth watching the trailing corner. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. The island pieces routinely exceed what six men can hand-carry down a domestic stair, so budget for glass suction and a stair crawler rather than assuming extra labour will solve it.

It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. One setting serves both halves of a mitre. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. 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.

One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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. The slot belongs to whoever can open the door. 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.

The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. Nested to the route first and the slab second.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Whether it comes off the same slab as the run behind it or needs one of its own is settled by laying both against the usable area of the slab, not by adding the metres up. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. The saw follows the nest, not the floor plan.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. Joins land over a cabinet gable and clear of every cut-out, because the alternative is a bridge of stone that will not survive the carry. The saw follows the template, never the plan.