Kitchen worktops in Greenwich

Yes. Most of the town-centre stock is narrow three-storey Georgian and early Victorian terraces where the kitchen sits in the back addition or on the lower ground floor, so runs are short, 2.4m to 3m, and rarely straight. Where the side return has been opened the kitchen becomes an L with a small peninsula rather than a true island. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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.

Georgian terrace, early Victorian terrace, Edwardian mansion flat and 1980s riverside infill. The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

The one-way system, the pedestrianised streets around the market and resident-permit-only bays mean a slab usually has to be walked in from wherever the van can legally stop, through a narrow Georgian front door and often down a tight winder stair to a lower-ground kitchen. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop fabrication, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Nothing here is square, template off the fitted units rather than the walls, and check the stair turn will take a 3m piece before quoting it as one.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. 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. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. 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.