Kitchen worktops in Brunswick Park

Yes. Quiet interwar and post-war family housing on closes and cul-de-sacs, with kitchens that are usually the original size and a modest rear or side addition at most. Typical job is a straight L of 3m plus 1.8m keeping the existing units, with new upstands and a window board in the same material. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

1930s semi, post-war cul-de-sac housing and 1960s low-rise flat. There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Cul-de-sac layouts with parking bays and drives, easy kerbside working, but turning a long-wheelbase van in some of the closes is tighter than it looks on a map. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating, 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. Where the customer keeps the units, the old tiled splashback usually comes off with the top and the plaster behind it needs making good before an upstand will sit tight.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. 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.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. 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.