Two kitchens a street apart in Roe Green can turn bathroom worktop fitting into two quite different pieces of work, which is why nothing is priced from the doorstep. 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. Bring us the problem rather than the diagnosis. Working out what you have got is the first thing we do.
Long perimeter runs and an island mean level has to hold across the whole room rather than along any one wall. The stone is the straightforward half of a bathroom. The order the trades come in is what actually decides when we can be there. The stone is the simple half of a bathroom fit.
These have been added to over two centuries, so the kitchen is made of two or three walls of different ages and different thicknesses. Bathrooms in houses this size are big enough for a double vanity, and a top with two basins and several tap holes is a worktop by any other measure. A rear addition bathroom is cold, narrow and full of pipework.
The building stock is 1918 garden village cottage, 1930s semi on the fringe and post-war infill. Knowing which one it is before we arrive is half the survey done.
Figures cover postcode district NW9| Figure | Roe Green | Against London | What it means for the job |
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| homes built before 1919 | 2% | pre-1919 share lower than 87% of the 723 areas we cover | Corners tend to come in close to square. |
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| homes built 1919 to 1939 | 61% | inter-war share higher than 90% of the 723 areas we cover | The inter-war kitchen repeats street to street. |
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| households with no car or van | 31% | no-car share lower than 64% of the 723 areas we cover | |
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Sources: VOA Council Tax Stock of Properties 2025 and ONS Census 2021 for 8 MSOAs (E02000094, E02000097 and 6 more). Open Government Licence v3.0.