Kitchen worktops in Lewisham

Yes. Town-centre stock splits between Victorian terraces off the high street with back-addition galleys and a growing number of tower flats with open-plan kitchen-living rooms and a peninsula. The new-build runs are short and precise; the Victorian ones are long, narrow and out of square. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The day is built around that window.

Victorian terrace, 1960s council tower, 1930s mansion flats and 2010s-2020s Loampit Vale towers. A long piece has to come through the front door, down the hall, round the newel post and through a doorway with a step down into the addition. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

The gyratory, bus lanes and shopping-centre servicing make kerbside stops difficult, the new towers need a booked goods lift, and the side streets are permit-only through the day. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One visit, done properly. Two completely different jobs within 400 metres of each other, establish which stock you're in before quoting the carry.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. 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.

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. 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. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.