Kitchen worktops in Primrose Hill

Yes. Tall narrow houses where the kitchen sits at garden level at the back of the lower ground, one room deep, so you are working to a 3-4m single run with a small return and rarely an island. The stucco terraces have shallow rear extensions rather than full-width returns, so the room stays long and thin no matter what the designer draws. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. 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.

early Victorian stucco terrace, Regency terrace, conversion flat and mews. Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Permit-only bays, waiting restrictions along most of the crescent frontages, and houses set behind railings with a bridge to the raised front door and a separate area stair down to the kitchen. Everything goes down those area steps under the front bridge, through a railing gate that is frequently under a metre wide. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. The area-stair route caps slab size long before the kitchen does, so plan joins around what will physically pass the railing gate rather than around the sink position.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. One datum for the whole room. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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 fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.