Kitchen worktops in Woodside Park

Yes. Large detached houses on wide plots where the kitchen is often a full-width rear room already, so the job is a proper redesign with a 3m island, a range with a stone surround, and a separate utility off the garage. Second ovens, wine fridges and boiling taps are standard here and each one takes another cut-out. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. Nothing here is added after the fact.

1930s detached, large 1930s semi and 1960s-70s executive detached. Original joinery is deep and stands proud of the plaster, so the run is plotted to the units rather than to the wall behind them. If the island top is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, you buy a second slab to gain that overhang, the whole slab, not the part you use, and that is a material decision worth more than any other line on the quote. That is what the itemised lines are for.

Some of the best access in the borough: long driveways, wide verged roads, off-street turning space and clear side gates to the rear garden. The only obstacle is usually a mature hedge or a gate post narrowing the side route. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The prep list is not optional. Big islands with multiple cut-outs need lifting in one piece with at least four hands, and the floor has to be checked for level across the whole island footprint first.

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. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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 householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first. 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.