Kitchen worktops in Mayfair

Yes. Two distinct jobs - grand flats where the kitchen is a small back-of-house room the owners never intended to be seen, and lateral conversions where two flats have been knocked together and the kitchen becomes a designed room with book-matched marble, a 3m island and a hidden prep pantry behind it. Specs come from an interior designer with a drawing, not from the client. 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. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Georgian townhouse, listed mansion flat, lateral apartment conversion and mews house. 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. An island a few hundred millimetres over the usable slab length costs a whole second slab, which is worth knowing before the layout is fixed. That is what the itemised lines are for.

Estate freeholders impose alteration consents and works hours, the buildings are listed so nothing gets fixed to original fabric without approval, and the lifts in period blocks are small original cars that will not take a slab. Deliveries are frequently routed through the mews at the back on a permit. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. You see that figure before we template, not after.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop templating, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Marble here is specified by the designer and it stains - get the client to sign off on sealing and expected patina before you fabricate, because the complaint always comes later.

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. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. The bench proves it before the van does. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. This is the item most often left out of a cheaper quote, and it comes back as a variation once the templater has been. Better on the quote than in a variation. 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.