Kitchen worktops in Isleworth

Yes. The bread-and-butter job is a 1930s semi where the kitchen has been knocked through into the rear addition to make a 4m to 5m L, the old larder taken out, and a single-bowl undermount put under the garden window. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. 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.

Victorian terrace, 1930s semi, Old Isleworth riverside cottage and 1960s estate. The rear wall is usually a single brick thick and has been rendered, patched and re-rendered, so it bows in and out along the length of the run. The day is planned backwards from the hall. That is the shape of the day.

Front gardens are widely paved over so a van can usually get within a few metres of the door. Twickenham Road is the pinch, and match-day closures around the stadium reach this far on Saturdays. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation 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. The knock-through into the rear addition always leaves a step in the wall line, and the return corner nearly always lands over a bricked-up chimney breast.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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 half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first. 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.