Kitchen worktops in West Wickham

Yes. Classic inter-war suburban stock where the standard project is knocking the kitchen into the dining room and extending 3m to the rear, producing a 4m run plus an island around 1.8-2.2m. Bin drawers, boiling taps and a separate utility door to the garden come up on nearly every specification. 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. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. We would rather ask than guess.

1930s semi, 1930s detached, 1950s detached and 1960s flats. A detached house of this age has a drive, a side path and a back door, so access is rarely the constraint and the design can follow the room. Walls between the original room and the extension are frequently out of square, which affects the template but not the price; what does affect it is the appliance list, because a drop-in range, an undermount bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a separate drainer are four separately priced cut-outs. Priced from the building, not from a rate card.

Good driveways and dropped kerbs on most roads, though the semis have a shared drive on some streets where you have to co-ordinate with the neighbour before blocking it. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop templating, 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. 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. The repeated 1930s footprint means the island rarely sits square to the original walls once the extension goes on, so the island is set off the new steels, not the old wall line.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. 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. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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 householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. 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.