Kitchen worktops in Wimbledon Village

Yes. Detached houses off the Common and up the hill run to full architect-drawn kitchens: a large centre island, a separate prep or pantry run, and often a second slab area in a utility or boot room. Islands of 3.2m and over are normal, and clients expect the same block of stone carried up the wall behind the hob. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The kerb decides the start time.

Georgian cottage, Large Victorian villa, Arts and Crafts detached and Interwar gated detached. The stair to the lower ground floor has a turn at the bottom and a low soffit above it, and both are measured before anything is nested. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

The High Street has loading bans through much of the day and there is effectively no on-street parking on the roads facing the Common. Many houses sit behind gravel drives with a wide but soft approach, and side gates are frequently too narrow for a slab, so the carry goes through the front door and down a hallway with a return. A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. A remake is the price of guessing that measurement.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Six kitchens, one slab run, one colour. This is book-matching and mitred waterfall work, vein direction has to be agreed on the actual slab before cutting, because a mismatched island end is the one thing that gets rejected here.

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. Scribed one piece at a time. 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 template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The casing gets plotted. The steel inside it does not. 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.

An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Two names on a drawing, one of them decides. 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.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. Van to door is the distance that matters.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. 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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. One datum for every run in the room.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. A larder, a butler sink and a dresser run put more edges and more cut-outs into the job than the floor area suggests. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. One visit, our own installers.

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. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. Crates are sized to clear the same openings the stone does.