Kitchen worktops in Campden Hill

Yes. Houses on the hill are frequently narrow-fronted and tall, four and five storeys over a basement, so the kitchen is deep in the lower ground with restricted headroom and a small rear lightwell. Runs are modest for the value of the property - 3m against one wall plus a 1.6-2m peninsula is common because the plan simply is not wide enough for a proper island. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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.

early Victorian villa, Georgian cottage terrace, purpose-built 1930s flats and mews and coach house. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

The gradient is the issue: the streets rise sharply, kerbs are high and a loaded trolley wants to run away from you downhill, so slabs get walked rather than wheeled. Many houses have narrow original front doors with fanlights that cannot be removed and internal stairs with a winder at the basement flight. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, 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. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Tall narrow houses with winder stairs - if the piece will not make the winder, it comes in through the front lightwell grating opening or it does not come in at all.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. 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. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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.