Kitchen worktops in Hyde Park Estate

Yes. The Tyburnia stucco houses have basement or lower-ground kitchens, while the post-war blocks on the estate have generously sized but plain kitchens with a straight 3m run and a separate utility cupboard. Mews houses squeeze a galley into the old carriage floor with a 2.2m run and a fold-out table. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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.

stucco terrace, 1960s estate block and mews house. Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. That is the shape of the day.

Blocks have underground parking with a 2m height barrier and a residents' lift, so the slab either comes down the ramp on a low-loader or gets walked from the street. Mews are cobbled and narrow with residents parked nose-in and no turning space. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Cobbled mews destroy trolley wheels and shake a slab - carry across the cobbles by hand rather than wheeling it, every time.

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. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. 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. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. 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. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.