Kitchen worktops in Wimbledon Village

Yes. Detached houses off the Common and up the hill run to full architect-drawn kitchens: a large centre island, a separate prep or pantry run, and often a second slab area in a utility or boot room. Islands of 3.2m and over are normal, and clients expect the same block of stone carried up the wall behind the hob. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The day is built around that window.

Georgian cottage, Large Victorian villa, Arts and Crafts detached and Interwar gated detached. The stair to the lower ground floor has a turn at the bottom and a low soffit above it, and both are measured before anything is nested. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

The High Street has loading bans through much of the day and there is effectively no on-street parking on the roads facing the Common. Many houses sit behind gravel drives with a wide but soft approach, and side gates are frequently too narrow for a slab, so the carry goes through the front door and down a hallway with a return. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Nested for the job in front of us. This is book-matching and mitred waterfall work — vein direction has to be agreed on the actual slab before cutting, because a mismatched island end is the one thing that gets rejected here.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. 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. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Photographs are worth more than a plan here. 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 workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves. 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.