Kitchen worktops in Fortis Green

Yes. Mix of small Victorian cottages with 2.4m kitchens and interwar estate houses where the standard job is a modest rear extension producing an L-shape with a breakfast bar rather than a full island. Family kitchen-diners rather than showpieces. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

Victorian cottage, Edwardian semi and 1920s Coldfall estate house. The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. The day is planned backwards from the hall, and the scribing takes longer than the carry. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Fortis Green road itself is narrow with parking both sides and a constant flow of buses, so unloading is a two-minute job then move the van. The estate streets are flatter and easier than the rest of N10. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, 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. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. The interwar estate houses have shallow 550mm base units in places - check the depth before ordering, a standard 620mm top leaves a bigger overhang than the client expects.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. 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. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Plumber either side of us. 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.