Kitchen worktops in Wandsworth Common

Yes. The larger houses on the streets bordering the common support full basement or lower-ground kitchens with a big island, a separate pantry run and often a second sink. Ceiling heights are generous, so tall stone splashback panels behind the range are common. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it.

Large Victorian villa, Edwardian detached and semi and Mansion flat. Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. The laser plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Many of these houses have a lower-ground entrance via a front lightwell with a steep flight of steps and a tight turn at the bottom — the worst carry in the area. On-street parking is permit-controlled with limited visitor bays. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop templating and worktop fabrication, in that order. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Getting stone down a lightwell stair is the constraint here, not the room — measure the stair headroom and the turn radius before agreeing any single-piece island top.

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. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Every join sits over a gable. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Material is quoted as a supply range and the labour lines separately, because an installed rate per square metre is not a real number. 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.