Kitchen worktops in South Kensington

Yes. The Thurloe and Onslow estate houses run to five or six storeys with a full basement, and the kitchen sits at basement level under the front pavement vault, often with a light well at the front and a dining room behind. Runs of 3.6m plus a substantial island are common, and stone is frequently specified as a full slab splashback behind the range because there is no window on that wall. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Tell us at enquiry stage and it is priced properly, because a crew stood waiting is the most expensive thing on any job. It is one line among the others, and it is honest.

1840s-50s stucco crescent and terrace, Italianate garden square house, Victorian mansion block and embassy-scale townhouse. Wider halls make the carry noticeably easier, and that alone can remove a join that a narrower terrace would have forced into the run. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Most of it is listed or in conservation area with pavement vaults, so you cannot stack slabs on the flags outside without checking the vault below, and the front area steps down to the basement door are the usual route in. Cromwell Road and the museum roads are heavily restricted, and the residents' bays fill early, so an early morning slot is worth having. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. 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.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, 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. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Material is the slab only, and it says so. Under-pavement vaults and cellar lids look solid and are not - never set an A-frame down on the flags in front of these houses without seeing what is underneath.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. 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. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Better on the quote than in a variation. 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 ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Every line has a reason next to it. 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.