Kitchen worktops in Strawberry Hill

Yes. Comfortable interwar detached houses and older villas with square rear kitchens that get extended to a full-width family room - a 4m run, an island of 2.4m, a bank of tall units where the old back door was, and often a second sink in a utility. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. 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.

Gothic revival villa, Victorian villa, 1920s and 1930s detached and 1930s semi. Houses of this period came with generous garages and utility rooms, so a second short run of stone is often part of the same job. The sill height over the sink is settled on site, because there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Quiet leafy roads with in-and-out drives and space to park on the plot, but a couple of railway-side roads narrow to single file and the level crossing holds traffic; mature front trees limit where a lorry can stop. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The laser records it along with everything else.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Big interwar houses have solid floors that fall towards the old back door, so worktop level and floor level diverge across a 4m run - shim early.

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. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. The drawing leaves site complete. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Eased in, never forced. 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.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. One visit, our own installers. 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.