Kitchen worktops in Kew

Yes. Neat Victorian and Edwardian terraces where the standard project is a modest side-return infill giving a 3.2m run plus a 1.5m return, with a rooflight over the sink; kitchens stay lighter and smaller in scale here than in the big Sheen semis, and islands are the exception. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Georgian house on the Green, Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace and 1930s semi. A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. The kitchen is usually a long galley in a rear extension or side return, so the run lengths are the first thing we check against slab length, anything beyond roughly three metres either needs a join or a second slab, and that decision alone moves the material figure more than a few extra square metres would. That is what the itemised lines are for.

Conservation area covering most of the streets, so skips and scaffolding are consented and frontages are protected; parking is permit-controlled all day and the level crossing and one-way loops make the approach slow. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, 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. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Appliances on site, not on order. Conservation rules keep the extensions narrow, so the run ends up long and thin - watch the overhang at the return where the wall kicks out.

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. The join count is stated with its reason. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.