Kitchen worktops in Aldborough Hatch

Yes. A low-density pocket on the edge of the Fairlop plain with a scattering of older cottages alongside post-war detached houses, so kitchen shapes vary a lot, some low-ceilinged and beamed with awkward window positions, others straightforward square rooms taking a simple U. Rear extensions here tend to be single-storey garden rooms rather than full side returns. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. The day is built around that window.

older cottage, 1930s semi, post-war detached and 1960s estate house. Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. Access is generally through the front door and a short straight hall into the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than a Victorian terrace, though rear access through a back garden or shared path is often the better route if it exists. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Semi-rural feel with verges, unrestricted parking and generous frontages, so unloading is easy; the older cottages have low door heads and narrow openings that dictate how a slab is carried in. 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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. The older properties out here have uneven floors, so levelling the base units properly matters more than usual before any stone goes down.

Three runs means two internal corners, and each corner is a decision about mitre or butt joint before anything is nested. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. 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.

Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.