Kitchen worktops in Pinner Green

Yes. Quieter interwar and post-war stock with regular plots, where kitchens are usually enlarged into the dining room rather than extended outwards, producing a straightforward L of roughly 3.6m plus 2.4m with a breakfast bar. Downsizers form a big share of the work, so the brief tends towards easy-maintenance surfaces and fewer, larger cupboards. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The day is built around that window.

1930s semi, 1950s-60s detached and small purpose-built block. Solid brick with a render coat is firm to work against and out of plumb, so the scribe at worktop height is different from the one at plinth level. Walls between the original room and the extension are frequently out of square, which affects the template but not the price; what does affect it is the appliance list, because a drop-in range, an undermount bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a separate drainer are four separately priced cut-outs. That is what the itemised lines are for.

Wide quiet roads with drives and low kerbs, no through traffic, and plenty of space to work off the tail lift on the plot itself. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. We price the carry from what you tell us about the route, so photographs of the approach are worth more to us than a floor plan. You see that figure before we template, not after.

Worktop replacement, 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. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template. Older customers often keep a freestanding cooker, so the worktop must finish with a clean polished edge each side of the gap rather than a factory-cut end.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The join is the last thing finished. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Photographs are worth more than a plan here. 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.

Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first. 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.