Kitchen worktops in Little Woodcote

Yes. Semi-rural smallholdings and large-plot houses on the downs, where kitchens are big utilitarian rooms with a boot room or back kitchen off them, a range cooker and a large island used as a work surface rather than a showpiece. Hard-wearing finishes matter more than gloss. 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. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The day is built around that window.

smallholding bungalow, detached house on large plot, converted agricultural building and modern replacement house. Lime plaster over rubble moves in and out enough that a single long panel will show a gap somewhere along its length. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. The bench proves it before the van moves.

Unmade lanes and farm tracks with potholes and mud, gated entrances and long gravel drives, and no street lighting, so winter fits have to be finished well before dark. 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. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. The tracks up here are rough enough that we transport on edge in a padded frame and check every piece on arrival before it goes anywhere near the house.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. 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.