Kitchen worktops in Elm Park

Yes. A planned 1930s estate built to a small number of repeating house types, so the kitchens are consistently modest, a narrow rear room with the back door in the corner and barely 2.4m of usable wall. Almost every job here involves either taking out the dining room wall or adding a shallow rear extension to get a workable L, and the client usually keeps a separate utility space by the back door. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1930s Costain-built estate semi, 1930s terrace and post-war infill. The kitchen sits at the rear with a back door beside it, so the carry is short and comes in from the garden rather than through the house. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Uniform estate roads with front gardens, dropped kerbs on many houses and a side alley between every pair, so there is nearly always a route to the back without going through the hall. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The prep list is not optional. The house types repeat, but the back-door corner is the killer detail, we always confirm the door swing before finalising the return length.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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 someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.