Kitchen worktops in Kingston Vale

Yes. Interwar and postwar semis with the standard rear kitchen of about 2.4m by 3.6m, most often extended into the side alley to give a single 3.6m run plus a short return, with the old back door blocked up and a new opening onto the garden. 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. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1930s semi, postwar semi, 1960s terrace and modern infill. The classic arrangement is the original back room with a later extension bolted onto it, so the kitchen is two ages of building in one room. 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. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

The area is squeezed between the A3 and the park gate, so getting in means timing the trunk-road traffic; once off it the streets are quiet with driveways and dropped kerbs, which makes unloading straightforward. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Side-alley infills give a room barely 2.2m wide, so a run plus a peninsula is the realistic maximum and the island idea has to go.

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. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Height change is checked before we cut. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. 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.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. Material is quoted as a supply range and the labour lines separately, because an installed rate per square metre is not a real number. Every line has a reason next to it. 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.