Kitchen worktops in Loxford

Yes. Tight terraced kitchens in the original back addition, typically a single 2.4-3m run with the boiler above it and the back door at the end, so the layout is fixed and the job is about getting the most usable length out of a narrow room. A lot of these are rented or recently bought and the units are staying, we are cutting to fit existing carcasses rather than starting fresh. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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.

Victorian two-up two-down terrace, inter-war terrace and low-rise flat. The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Narrow terraced streets with rear service alleys, heavy on-street parking pressure and very little off-street space, so slabs generally come off the van at the kerb and go through the front door and down the hall. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Nine times out of ten the units are old and out of level here, so we scribe hard to the wall and expect to pack the run rather than trust the existing tops as a guide.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.