Kitchen worktops in Richmond Hill

Yes. Tall Georgian and Regency houses, many listed, where the kitchen sits in the lower ground or basement with a 2.4m ceiling, a chimney breast and a 3m to 3.5m run along the internal wall, and a separate scullery-style utility beside the vault. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Georgian terrace, Regency villa, Victorian mansion block and listed terrace. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. 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. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

The hill is steep with double yellows on most of the frontage, listed railings that cannot be removed, and a narrow area stair down to the basement door - so slabs go down on edge with a man below and a man above. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. 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 replacement, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. Listed status rules out cutting back a wall to make a run fit, so the top is templated to the building as found, bows and all.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Found at template, not on fit day. 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. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed. 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.