Kitchen worktops in Roe Green

Yes. The garden village cottages have genuinely small kitchens with low ceilings and original window positions that cannot be moved, so runs are short at 2.1m to 2.7m and every centimetre of return matters. Owners tend to spend on a small area of good material rather than on quantity, and appliance choice is limited by the depth available. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

1918 garden village cottage, 1930s semi on the fringe and post-war infill. Doorways are low and narrow, which is a genuine constraint on piece length before anything else is considered. Any island overhang past about 300mm will not carry weight on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or brackets have to be let into the units first, and that is agreed at template stage, not on fit day. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

Narrow lanes, grass verges and shared front paths through the conservation area, with limited parking and no driveways on the original cottages, so the carry is on foot across grass and paving. 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. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop design & quotation, 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. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Nothing payable until we template. Short runs in a conservation cottage leave no room for error, so a paper or laser template of the actual opening beats any drawing of nominal unit widths.

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. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. 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.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. Material is quoted as a supply range and the labour lines separately, because an installed rate per square metre is not a real number. Written to be read by whoever is paying. 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.