Kitchen worktops in Barnes Cray

Yes. Small planned housing built for the nearby works: uniform terraces with narrow rear kitchens around 2m wide, often with the bathroom leading off the kitchen, so a straight replacement in situ is the normal job. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

1920s-30s industrial estate housing, postwar terrace and 1960s flats. The goods lift is generous and the flat entrance often is not, so the tightest point on the route is inside the flat rather than in the building. Exposed brick and steel is the whole job here: the brick face is not a flat plane, it moves in and out over its height and along its length, so the scribe is taken at the exact height the worktop will sit rather than off the wall generally. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

Flat riverside ground with wide but frequently blocked estate roads and industrial traffic; parking is on-street and generally available. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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 replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating, in that order. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Bathrooms and boilers off the kitchen put pipework in the run — expect notching and awkward cut-outs behind the units.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Carcasses have to be sound first. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. 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.

Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak. 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.