Kitchen worktops in Richmond Hill

Yes. Tall Georgian and Regency houses, many listed, where the kitchen sits in the lower ground or basement with a 2.4m ceiling, a chimney breast and a 3m to 3.5m run along the internal wall, and a separate scullery-style utility beside the vault. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

Georgian terrace, Regency villa, Victorian mansion block and listed terrace. A basement kitchen has a flagged or concrete floor laid straight onto the ground, so it is solid, cold and rarely within ten millimetres of level. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Off in the morning, on by the afternoon.

The hill is steep with double yellows on most of the frontage, listed railings that cannot be removed, and a narrow area stair down to the basement door - so slabs go down on edge with a man below and a man above. There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house. Listed status rules out cutting back a wall to make a run fit, so the top is templated to the building as found, bows and all.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The island top is the one that may want its own slab. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. Original quarry tile is often still down under two or three later floor coverings, which is why the finished floor height is rarely what anyone expects. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. The wall behind the old top is rarely the wall on the drawing.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence.