Kitchen worktops in Roxeth

Yes. Older, smaller cottages mixed with interwar terraces, so ceiling heights and window positions vary house to house and there is no standard layout to work from. Kitchens are commonly 2.4m to 3m single runs with a door at each end, and owners keep the units and change surfaces. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

Victorian cottage, 1930s terrace and post-war infill flat. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. 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 laser 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.

Narrow streets on the slope below the hill, kerbside parking only on the older cottages, and low door heads on the Victorian stock that make tilting a slab through a doorway awkward. The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The laser records it along with everything else.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Same batch, same run, same day. Low door heads and tight halls mean measuring the diagonal clearance at every doorway on the route, not just the kitchen entrance.

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. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. The drawing leaves site complete. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. Where the wall cannot be made good, setting the stone deliberately proud on a subframe with a shadow gap reads as a detail rather than a bad fit. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. Splashbacks are cut from the same slab run as the tops, so they have to be decided before fabrication, not after. Same slab run as the tops. 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.