Kitchen worktops in Albany Park

Yes. A single large interwar estate built alongside the station, so house types repeat almost exactly: rear kitchen around 2.4m by 2.7m with a side door, dining room in front, and a knock-through producing a 3.4m run and a breakfast bar. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1930s Albany Park estate semi, interwar terrace and postwar infill. The kitchen sits at the rear with a back door beside it, so the carry is short and comes in from the garden rather than through the house. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

A uniform grid of wide roads with drives and dropped kerbs on most houses; parking is easy except right around the station at commuter times. 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. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Worktop replacement, 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order. Because the house types repeat, so do the surprises — the same buried chimney breast and the same sagging back wall in every one.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The join is the last thing finished. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.