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. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

1920s-30s industrial estate housing, postwar terrace and 1960s flats. Poured screed over steel decking can fall away across a long run, so level is checked across the whole room before anything is packed. Where a column, downstand or steel plate lands in the run, the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it instead of being stopped short and filled. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Flat riverside ground with wide but frequently blocked estate roads and industrial traffic; parking is on-street and generally available. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Bathrooms and boilers off the kitchen put pipework in the run, expect notching and awkward cut-outs behind the units.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Plotted, not estimated. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction. 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.