Kitchen worktops in Honor Oak

Yes. Largely interwar and postwar municipal housing on the hill, small square kitchens with a back door and a boiler cupboard and a single run under 3m. Alterations are usually taking out the wall to the dining room rather than extending. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

1930s Honor Oak Estate housing, Victorian terrace and postwar maisonette block. Walls are dense block or in-situ concrete with a bonded plaster, so the bottom course of tiles brings plaster with it when the old top comes off. Unit height is the other issue: legs sit on an uneven screed or hard concrete with no give, so the template reads the top of every carcass rather than assuming they share a height. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

Estate roads on a steep slope with parking courts and stepped front paths, and some blocks reached only from an upper road with a flight of steps down to the entrance. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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 replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating, in that order. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Stepped approaches off the estate roads mean the last ten metres is a stair carry with no barrow option.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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.

Where a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. 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.