Kitchen worktops in Ruislip

Yes. Substantial semis and detached houses with rear kitchen-diners built around an island or peninsula. In-frame shaker doors and 30mm quartz are the default, usually as part of a side-return-plus-rear wrap extension. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

1930s Metroland semi, interwar detached, village conservation area cottage and postwar infill. Houses of this period came with generous garages and utility rooms, so a second short run of stone is often part of the same job. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. That is the shape of the day.

The village High Street is conservation-controlled with short-stay parking only, but the residential avenues have long drives and gated entrances with room for a full A-frame. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop templating, 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. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. The wrap-around extension produces an L that is longer than a slab in both directions, so the choice is a joint under the hob or a joint at the corner, and that gets decided at template.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. 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.

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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.