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. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

Large Victorian villa, Edwardian detached and semi and Mansion flat. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

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. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop templating and worktop fabrication, in that order. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Nothing payable until we template. 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.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Written to be read by whoever is paying. 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.