Kitchen worktops in Canbury

Yes. A tight grid of Victorian terraces between the station and the river, nearly all with side-return or full-width rear extensions - a 3.2m run along the flank, a small 1.6m island or a peninsula, and rooflights that make the client want a low-reflectance finish. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, converted riverside works and modern riverside flats. 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. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. That is the shape of the day.

Narrow gridded streets with parking on both sides and a controlled zone all day, plus a river frontage that limits through routes; front-door carries with a stair newel to negotiate are standard. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, 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. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Extensions here are almost all steel-framed with a glazed rear, so the flank wall is the only true reference line - level off that, not the floor.

A galley run down a side-return extension usually measures longer than a slab will give in one length, so a join is designed in from the start rather than discovered. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. 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 quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template. 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.