Kitchen worktops in Becontree

Yes. The heart of the Becontree estate, built by the London County Council between the wars to a limited set of house types, so the same kitchen comes up again and again: a small rear scullery with a copper recess or larder, a back lobby, and a separate dining room next door. Almost every job involves removing the lobby and larder walls to make one room, which yields a 3-3.5m L with a peninsula and finally somewhere to put a dishwasher. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1920s-1930s LCC cottage estate house, ex-council terrace and ex-council semi. An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. Concrete and dense block walls in ex-council stock cannot be chased back or packed out to suit, so the template takes the wall exactly as it is and the stone carries the scribe. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Long straight estate roads, front gardens, verges and generally unrestricted parking, plus a side alley or rear path serving most blocks, so unloading is genuinely easy here compared with inner Redbridge. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. That is part of what the visit is for.

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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A plumber either side of us. These houses were built fast and nothing is square, so we template every Becontree kitchen and allow a proper scribe on both ends of the run.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. One datum for the whole room. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. The laminate has been covering it up. 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. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Plumber either side of us. 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.