Kitchen worktops in Petersham

Yes. A village of listed houses and cottages where kitchens are rooms with history - flagstone or timber floors, low beams, deep window reveals, and a preference for a chunky 30mm honed finish on a 3m run with a freestanding-look island rather than a full modern fitted look. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. Two hours is the realistic figure.

17th and 18th century listed house, Georgian cottage, Victorian villa and 1930s detached. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. The second thing is the carry route: front door, narrow hall, a turn at the stairs and often a step down into the extension, which can mean a piece that would template in one length has to be split to physically get into the room. Priced from the building, not from a rate card.

Petersham Road is a narrow two-way pinch point along the meadows with almost nowhere to pull in, the meadows flood in winter, and most houses have a gate and a gravel or brick path rather than a drive to the door. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. Nothing about it gets estimated after the fact.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. Listed-building consent shapes what can be fixed to the wall, so upstands are often loose-laid or replaced by a stone shelf instead of being resined to plaster.

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. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. The join count is stated with its reason. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.