Kitchen worktops in Lamorbey

Yes. Interwar housing around the park with rear kitchens and separate dining rooms; many have a side extension over the old garage, which gives a wide kitchen with an L and a small island rather than one long run. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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.

1930s semi, interwar detached, 1960s low-rise flats and postwar terrace. An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. The typical 1930s kitchen sits at the back with a low window over the sink run, so the template records the exact sill height above the units to settle whether an upstand fits or the stone has to die into a window board. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Quiet roads with verges and drives, good turning space throughout, and school traffic around the park as the only timing issue. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order. Side-extension kitchens mean the run crosses an old external wall, expect a step in the wall line and template for it.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. 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.