Kitchen worktops in Belmont

Yes. Consistent interwar semis around the circle, mostly still with the kitchen and dining room as separate rooms, and the common upgrade is knocking those two together for a 3.6m run with a breakfast peninsula rather than building outwards. Original serving hatches turn up regularly and get closed off during the refit. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

1930s semi, 1930s parade with maisonettes and post-war infill housing. The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. That is the shape of the day.

Quiet residential roads with drives and straightforward kerbside loading, plus maisonettes over the parade shops that need an external rear staircase and a careful turn at the top. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Knock-through kitchens leave a stub of the old dividing wall, and that stub is almost never plumb, so template it rather than assume a straight line to the return.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. The template 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. 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.