Kitchen worktops in Roxbourne

Yes. Repetitive interwar estate housing where every kitchen is effectively the same box, which makes it good like-for-like replacement territory: a 2.7m run with a return of about 1.2m and a back door in the corner. Extensions are less common than in the wealthier Harrow districts, so footprints usually stay as built. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

1930s estate semi, interwar terrace and 1960s maisonette block. Many have been extended at the rear since being sold, so the kitchen is half original and half newer with a floor junction between the two. The carry is the constraint. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Uniform estate roads with drives on many houses and consistent side gate widths, which makes access predictable; maisonette blocks need a shared external stair and a two-person lift up. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Uniform stock means a template from one house nearly fits the next, but never assume it, because 1930s builders varied the back-door corner by an inch or two.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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.

These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.