Kitchen worktops in Bromley Common

Yes. A lot of stock with the original small rear kitchen still in place, often 2.4-2.8m of run with the boiler on the wall and a back door in the middle of the elevation. Where extensions have gone on they are usually modest rear infills rather than full-width. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

inter-war semi, post-war council-built terrace, 1960s maisonette and Victorian cottage. An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. The typical 1930s kitchen sits at the back with a low window over the sink run, so the template records the exact sill height above the units to settle whether an upstand fits or the stone has to die into a window board. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Front gardens converted to hardstanding on the private roads make it easy, but the ex-local-authority terraces have shared paths and no vehicle access to the rear, so it is a front-door carry through a narrow hall. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Boiler pipework and a back door swing eat into the run here, so the template has to work around fixed services rather than the other way round.

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. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. 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. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. 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.