Kitchen worktops in Bush Hill Park

Yes. This is side-return infill country - the original narrow galley in the back addition gets widened by 1.8m, which turns a 2.1m run into a 4m run plus a small island or peninsula. The conservation area limits what you can do to the front but the rear is where the money goes. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The day is built around that window.

Edwardian garden-suburb semi, Victorian bay terrace and 1930s infill. Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. What is under the old top is the real question.

Roads are flat and wide but parked solid both sides thanks to the station controlled zone, so you often carry from 40-50m away. Front gardens are deep with a tiled path and a gate that needs lifting off. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. In an infilled side return the new run crosses the line of the old external wall - check for a level step and a soft spot in the floor before you template, because a 4m slab will telegraph any dip.

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. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Height change is checked before we cut. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Plotted, not estimated. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. Appliances on site, not on order. 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.