Kitchen worktops in Malden Rushett

Yes. Green-belt fringe housing - cottages with small low-ceilinged kitchens and thick uneven walls, and detached houses and bungalows with big open kitchen-diners where a 3m island and a full-height larder wall are the ask, often with an oil or LPG installation to work around. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Victorian cottage, interwar detached, postwar bungalow and modern rural-edge house. A bay-fronted terrace has a long hall running past the stairs to the kitchen, so the hall turn caps the piece length before the run length does. Alcoves either side of the breast are rarely the same width and rarely parallel, so each one is templated as its own piece with its own scribe. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

Semi-rural approach on fast single-carriageway roads with no pavement in places, gravel and unmade drives, and gates that a long-wheelbase van cannot swing into without dropping the load at the roadside. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, 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. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Cottage walls here are rubble or soft brick and nowhere near plumb, so upstands and end scribes take longer than the run itself.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Slab yield is worked out at quote stage, so if the layout forces a second slab you hear it before you commit rather than after. Shape first, area second. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Plotted, not estimated. 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. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Appliances on site, not on order. 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.