Kitchen worktops in Mayfair

Yes. Two distinct jobs - grand flats where the kitchen is a small back-of-house room the owners never intended to be seen, and lateral conversions where two flats have been knocked together and the kitchen becomes a designed room with book-matched marble, a 3m island and a hidden prep pantry behind it. Specs come from an interior designer with a drawing, not from the client. 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 templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

Georgian townhouse, listed mansion flat, lateral apartment conversion and mews house. Arts and Crafts houses have deep eaves, low windows and inglenook recesses, so the kitchen has more corners and reveals than its floor area suggests. Big islands are what drive the number. Priced from the building, not from a rate card.

Estate freeholders impose alteration consents and works hours, the buildings are listed so nothing gets fixed to original fabric without approval, and the lifts in period blocks are small original cars that will not take a slab. Deliveries are frequently routed through the mews at the back on a permit. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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 templating, in that order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Marble here is specified by the designer and it stains - get the client to sign off on sealing and expected patina before you fabricate, because the complaint always comes later.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. 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.