Kitchen worktops in Shooters Hill

Yes. Large detached and semi-detached houses on the higher ground with proper kitchen-breakfast rooms, usually extended into the garden — 4m runs and full islands are normal, and there is often a separate utility with its own worktop. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

Victorian villa, Edwardian detached, 1930s semi and postwar estate. Handmade brick and lime plaster move visibly along a run, and a straight-cut back edge shows it immediately. Big islands are what drive the number. Priced from the building, not from a rate card.

The gradient defines everything: long sloping drives, houses set well above the road behind steps, and a fast main road up the hill with nowhere safe to unload on the bends. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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 installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication, 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. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Material is the slab only, and it says so. Plenty of room inside, but the approach is uphill and often over gravel — bring a proper A-frame rather than trusting a barrow.

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. Dry-lay first, always. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the laser plots the intermediate points. 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.

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 quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template. 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.