Kitchen worktops in Hammersmith

Yes. Away from the gyratory the stock is standard two-bay Victorian terrace with a rear kitchen, and the common job is a side-return infill giving an L of about 3.4m by 2.4m with an island where the old boundary wall was. Riverside Georgian houses near the bridge are a different animal - small rooms, uneven floors and kitchens of 2.4-2.8m that have to work around original panelling. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. We would rather ask than guess.

Victorian terrace, Georgian riverside terrace by the bridge, 1960s-70s tower and slab block and recent town centre apartment scheme. The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

The gyratory and the flyover approach are red-route controlled with no stopping, so the van goes onto the residential streets and the crew walks the last stretch. Terraced streets here mostly have front gardens with a gate and a step, and the standard route in is the hallway past the stair newel, which is where longer pieces get stopped. 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. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop templating, worktop fabrication 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. The hall newel post is the usual failure point on a Victorian terrace - offer the template board up the hall before you commit to a single-piece island.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. 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.