Kitchen worktops in New Malden, Kingston and south west London

All of them. This patch runs across Kingston upon Thames, Wimbledon, Richmond, Surbiton, Epsom, Sutton, Twickenham and Esher. New Malden is the name we give the patch, not a limit on it, and plenty of the kitchens we fit sit between those towns rather than in them. Send a postcode and you will get a straight yes or no in writing.

No. There is no branch here and nothing to collect. We template in your kitchen, cut in our workshop and fit in your kitchen. Samples are posted out free instead, and that is not a compromise: a sample sitting on your own units under your own downlights tells you far more about a surface than showroom lighting ever will.

Usually, but the route in decides how the stone is cut rather than the other way round. A four-metre length of 20mm quartz is a rigid two-person carry and it will not turn a tight corner. Tell us about the alley, the door widths and any turn in the hallway at the template visit and we plan the piece sizes and the join positions around what will physically pass.

It changes the piece sizes and the size of the crew, so it needs to be known at quote stage rather than found on fitting day. Access is one of the six things that move a worktop price, alongside square metreage, the material, the number of cut-outs, the edge work and the number of joins. Tell us which floor you are on and what the stairs actually do. A straight flight and a dog-leg with a tight half-landing are different jobs.

Somewhere we can stop close to the door. Tell us at template whether you have a permit, a dropped kerb, a shared drive or a bay that can be booked out, and we plan the delivery around it. If we are going to be carrying stone a long way from the van we would rather know a week ahead than at eight on the morning of the fit.

That is exactly what the template is for. We plot the real wall line, bows and all, and the back edges are then scribed to it on fitting day so the stone follows the wall instead of fighting it. It is also why we cannot template from a plan or from units that are not yet fixed down. The drawing has to describe the room as it is, not as it was designed.

Very often, and in period houses here it is most of what we do. The carcasses need to be sound and properly fixed, because stone is a great deal heavier than laminate and a unit swollen by a slow leak under the sink will not carry it. We check at template and tell you plainly what has to be put right before fitting day rather than discovering it with your old top in the garden.

Wherever we agree at template, and you sign the position off before anything is cut. A visible join in stone is typically 2–3mm, filled with colour-matched adhesive and sanded flush. Nobody can make one vanish, so the skill is putting it where your eye does not travel. How many you need depends on the run length and the slab size of the material you have chosen, and we give you the likely number at quotation.

Expect the bottom course to come off with it, because the old laminate normally runs underneath the tiles. A 100mm upstand or a full-height splashback cut from the same slab run as your worktop covers that line and removes the grout joint for good. It does have to be ordered with the worktop. Cut months later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet.