Worktops in Mayfair

Yes. Mayfair is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W1J, W1K, W1S. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A resident bay and a shared-use bay can sit on the same street under different rules, and it is usually the shared one a visitor permit or a ticket touches. Whatever the standing allows, the stone leaves that van finished, because every edge, cut-out and internal radius is machined at the works and none of it is open to reconsideration at the kerb. The face is uncovered once, and that once is at handover. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Floors are boards over joists with a solid floor only in the service rooms, and the two meet somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. A kitchen of this size runs to two slabs almost every time, and once a second slab is in the quotation the question shifts from rate per square metre to which slab you actually want to live with. Plain stone takes the seam that a long carry forces. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. Every notch and every scribe is machined into the piece before it leaves the works, and a hard sintered surface is the least forgiving of a tight internal corner, so one is always cut with a generous radius. A cut-out beside a notch leaves very little stone in between.

A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. That caps the longest piece, and a run split into two lengths nests differently on the slab, which moves the yield and moves the figure with it. A long granite length at full thickness is four hands, not two. A shared-use bay allows a paid stay up to a set maximum, and that maximum is routinely shorter than the working day the job needs. A granite kitchen ends its day with a sealer, and a sealer wants a dry face and a quiet hour afterwards, so that hour is written into the day rather than borrowed from it. Stone arrives finished, because a kerb is not a polishing shop.

Not particularly. It would be easy to say yes and leave it there. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication. That is about what people have here rather than how it gets done. It is quoted, cut and fitted exactly the same way here as anywhere else on the patch. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Where several kitchens are ordered together the sensible move is to take them all off one batch, because two slabs of the same name bought six months apart will not sit happily in the same building. A focal surface deserves to be seen at full size. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Volume work tends to live at the entry end of the range, and the entry end is genuine stone rather than a compromise, since the lowest supply figure we quote is a sintered surface and not a thin laminate pretending to be one. Specify before the room is finished, not afterwards.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. A shape like that nests kindly on a slab, so more of what gets bought ends up on the units and the rate per square metre behaves much as the brochure says it will. Finished ends cost by the metre, however short the run is. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. A run that sits under strong sun for hours every afternoon suits a surface built to be stable in daylight, because a resin-bound stone is made for indoor use and sustained sunlight is the one thing it was never designed around. Heat at the lip of an opening is the slow kind of damage. Send the island dimensions and the perimeter run lengths, say whether a waterfall end is wanted, and tell us which slab you would like reserved. An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. That changes which questions are worth asking about the stone, because somebody staying put wants to know how a honed face marks in five years and somebody selling wants to know how it photographs next spring. A week under your own lights is how a colour declares itself.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. A deep scribe eats into the back of the piece, which is quietly important on a stone with directional figure, since the pattern moves backwards as that depth comes off. The obstruction is templated as found and cut as templated.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. An island is the piece that decides whether one slab covers the kitchen or two, and a second slab arrives as a step in the figure rather than a gentle slope. Cut-outs take material out of the piece that carries the sink.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Power and waste come up through the floor, and where they surface decides which cabinet can hold a sink and which one cannot. A mitred corner asks the pattern to turn through a right angle, which an even speckle does without comment and a marble-look stone makes a performance of. Extra depth sounds free and frequently buys another slab.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. 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. There is usually an island, and the island takes the liveliest part of the stone while the perimeter is allowed to stay quiet, which is a decision made at the slab rather than on paper. Hard-working kitchens suit surfaces that ask for nothing.