Kitchen worktops in Roundshaw

Yes. Built on the old Croydon Airport land and largely rebuilt since, so the housing is modern-estate standard: compact kitchens of around 2.7m in an open-plan or semi-open layout, with a washing machine in the run because there is no utility. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

1970s estate housing, 1990s-2000s rebuilt estate housing, low-rise flats and housing association terrace. Rear access through a garden or a shared path means long pieces can usually come in whole from the back. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.

Parking courts and pedestrian decks rather than roadside frontage, controlled bollards on some routes, and communal entrances to the flatted blocks with an intercom. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. Joint positions follow from that.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. With the washing machine in the worktop run the cut-outs sit close together, so the piece needs a support rail across the appliance gap or it will flex when the machine spins.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first. 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.