Kitchen worktops in Olympia

Yes. The streets around the exhibition halls mix family terraces with lower-ground kitchens and a scatter of former studio houses that have double-height rooms and unusually tall kitchen walls, where clients often want full-height stone rather than an upstand. Terrace kitchens run 3-3.6m with a modest island, and the studio properties throw up one long uninterrupted wall that suits a single-piece splashback. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The frame is filled back to front when the bay is booked short.

Victorian terrace, mansion flat, artists' studio house and mixed-use block near the exhibition centre. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The saw follows the template, never the plan.

Event days at the exhibition centre bring road closures, traffic management and full parking suspensions on the surrounding streets, so check the event calendar before booking a fit. Otherwise the streets are ordinary CPZ terraces with front paths and steps, and the usual hallway-and-newel problem. Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The cut list answers to the way in first.

Worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The batch is checked against itself before it leaves. Check whether there is a show on before you book the day, because an exhibition closure can put you 400m from the front door with a full A-frame.

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. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. A galley shows both walls at the same time. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. 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.

Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A piece too long for the stairs is a piece cut twice.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Gas, waste and later wiring were boxed in against the wall long after the house was built, and that boxing is what the run has to clear. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The wall decides, not the brochure.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.