Kitchen worktops in Longford

Yes. A handful of old cottages and inn-adjacent properties with very small kitchens, exposed beams and uneven floors. Single runs of 2m to 2.5m with everything undercounter. 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. Two hours is the realistic figure.

17th and 18th century cottage, listed coaching-inn stock and 20th century ribbon housing. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out.

Frontages sit directly on the Bath Road opposite the airport perimeter fence, with heavy commercial traffic passing and effectively no residential parking. 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. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Low ceilings and beams mean you cannot upend a slab once you are inside, so it comes in flat and gets set in one movement.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak. 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.