Kitchen worktops in Farnborough

Yes. Old village properties along the high street have small, awkward kitchens with low beams and uneven floors, while the surrounding post-war detached have conventional square kitchens being opened into the dining room. Ranges and freestanding cookers are common, which means a gap in the run rather than a cut-out. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

village cottage, 1930s detached, 1960s detached and bungalow. Doorways are low and narrow, which is a genuine constraint on piece length before anything else is considered. The island is templated for its overhang, its support and the position of the hob or sink within it, with sockets and any pop-up left where they will genuinely be. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

The village high street is narrow with no loading room and traffic behind you, so unloading has to be quick and often at an angle; the surrounding closes are far easier with drives. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The template records it along with everything else.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, 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. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. In the old cottages nothing is level or plumb, so we scribe against the walls and expect to take 15mm out of a template edge on site.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. 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.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. 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.