Kitchen worktops in Hampstead Garden Suburb

Yes. Original kitchens are small service rooms at the back with pantries, and because external alterations need Trust approval on top of planning, most improvement happens inside the existing envelope: knocking a scullery and pantry together for a 3m to 3.5m run with a modest island only where the plan allows. Joinery is usually painted in-frame with honed stone rather than high-gloss, and the fitting has to respect original doors, ironmongery and floor levels. 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. It is one line among the others, and it is honest.

1900s-1930s Arts and Crafts houses, cottage terraces and closes and listed and locally listed stock. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

Narrow lanes and closes, grass verges that vans are not welcome on, front paths through planted gardens, and hedges and gates the Trust will not allow to be temporarily removed. Off-street parking is limited and the carry from a legal stopping point is often long. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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 templating, 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. 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. You work around what is already there in the Suburb, because the things that would normally be taken out to get a slab in, a window, a door frame, a fence panel, are exactly the things that are controlled.

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 templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. One datum for the whole room. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. 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. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. 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.