Kitchen worktops in Grove Park

Yes. Interwar semis with a rear kitchen and separate dining room, plus a large slice of postwar estate housing with compact galleys. Extensions here are usually single-storey rear rather than side return, ending in a 3.5m run with a peninsula. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

1930s semi, interwar terrace, postwar estate and 1960s low-rise flats. There is usually a shared rear alley, and whether the gate onto it is unlocked decides whether long pieces come in from the back. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. That is the shape of the day.

Suburban roads with drives and verges, though the railway and the Chinbrook end leave several dead-end streets with limited turning; parking is generally free and on-plot. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop installation, worktop replacement 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 template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Driveway access means a full-length piece is usually deliverable, the constraint is the internal doorway, not the street.

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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Sound carcasses are the condition. 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.