Kitchen worktops in Earlsfield

Yes. Two-storey terraces where the standard project is filling the side return to give a kitchen about 3.5m wide, with cabinets along the flank and a narrow 1.6m to 2m island or a peninsula. Houses on the smaller streets stay galley-only because the return is too shallow to gain useful width. 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. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace and Purpose-built 1930s flat. The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. Alcoves either side of the breast are rarely the same width and rarely parallel, so each one is templated as its own piece with its own scribe. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Streets are permit-controlled with narrow carriageways, and the railway embankment and Garratt Lane traffic limit approach routes. Front gardens are shallow, so there is barely a metre to stage a slab before the door. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Small kitchens in a shared house are all short runs and tight cut-out spacing, which is more bench work per square metre than one large kitchen would be. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Side-return roofs here often bring a downpipe or a boiler flue through the new flank wall, so the run gets a notch or a shortened piece that has to be picked up at template, not at fit.

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. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.