Kitchen worktops in Old Ford

Yes. Almost every renovated house here has a rear extension running to the boundary, which turns the old kitchen and scullery into one room with a 3m to 3.5m run under a flat rooflight and a separate island. Un-extended houses still have the kitchen at the very back with a door straight into the garden. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. Two hours is the realistic figure.

Victorian terrace, interwar cottage estate and canal-side new-build. The party wall is the straightest surface in the house and everything else has moved away from it over a century. The laser plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Streets on the park side are broken up by modal filters and planters, so the van has to approach from the correct end or it will be reversing a long way back out. Several canal-facing properties have no vehicle frontage at all and the only route in is a towpath walk with a bridge ramp. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The laser records it along with everything else.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order. Rear extensions here are usually finished before the kitchen goes in, so the template date slips with the plasterer and the levels across a 6m room need checking properly.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. The join count is stated with its reason. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. 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.