Kitchen worktops in Plumstead

Yes. Tight Victorian terraces stepping up the hill, most with a narrow back-addition kitchen, and a high proportion of flat conversions where the kitchen has been fitted into whatever room was left. Straight galley runs of 2.4m to 3.2m, wall units both sides, no island. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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.

dense Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, postwar estate and 1980s infill. The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

Steep hillside streets with permit parking and no driveways, plus long flights of front steps on the upper roads, the carry is usually uphill and through the house rather than round the side. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. 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 replacement, worktop templating and worktop fabrication, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order. Old lath-and-plaster and soft brick mean scribing to bowed walls is normal; assume the back wall is out by 15mm over 3m.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.