Kitchen worktops in Deptford

Yes. Three distinct stocks: surviving Georgian houses with tight basement or ground-rear kitchens, estate flats with 2.4m single-run galleys, and riverside apartments with island-and-run open plan. The Georgian houses are the fiddly ones, with no square corners and thick uneven walls. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. 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.

Georgian terrace, dense Victorian terrace, 1960s-70s tower and slab estate and 2010s riverside apartment block. Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Congested narrow streets, market days closing the high street, estate parking courts with height barriers, and riverside blocks that need a booked lift and loading bay. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop fabrication, 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Height barriers over the estate car parks catch people out, check the van clears them or you're carrying from the road.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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.

These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction. 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.