Kitchen worktops in Nunhead

Yes. Smaller artisan Victorian terraces where the original kitchen is a cramped closet wing - the standard upgrade is a modest rear extension giving a straight 3m run plus a 1.2m return, with a peninsula instead of an island because the room is not wide enough for both. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

Victorian two-up two-down, Victorian terrace, 1950s council rebuild and interwar semi. The party wall is the straightest surface in the house and everything else has moved away from it over a century. The second thing is the carry route: front door, narrow hall, a turn at the stairs and often a step down into the extension, which can mean a piece that would template in one length has to be split to physically get into the room. That is what the itemised lines are for.

Steeply graded streets running up towards the cemetery, narrow carriageways with parking both sides, and a lot of houses with a side alley too narrow for a slab trolley, so it is a front-door carry. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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 installation and worktop replacement, 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. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Nothing payable until we template. Rooms here are frequently under 2.4m wide, so the client has to be talked out of an island early or the walkways end up under 900mm.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. 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.

Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template. 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.