Kitchen worktops in Bowes Park

Yes. Tight grid of Victorian terraces where most houses have been split into a ground-floor and a first-floor flat. Ground-floor flats get the back addition kitchen with a side-return infill if the owner has money; upper flats have the kitchen wedged into a back bedroom with a 2.2m run and a boiler cupboard. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace and flat conversion. The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. Alcoves either side of the breast are rarely the same width and rarely parallel, so each one is templated as its own piece with its own scribe. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

No front gardens to speak of and doors almost straight off the pavement, permit parking all day, and the railway cuts several streets so you cannot always drive round the block. Upper conversions have no lift and a narrow original staircase. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. 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 templating and worktop installation, 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us. Upper-floor conversions above 2.4m of straight run need the top jointed at the stair - carry the pieces separately and joint in the room.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Sound carcasses are the condition. 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.