Kitchen worktops in Ruislip Gardens

Yes. Modest 1930s semis, mostly unextended, where the kitchen and dining room have been opened into one. Straight runs of around 3m with a bay left for a freestanding fridge-freezer. 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. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it.

1930s semi, interwar terrace and postwar infill. An inter-war terrace is wider than a Victorian one and shallower than a semi, so the kitchen is a compact square room rather than a galley. The kitchen is normally the original back room with a later side-return or rear extension bolted on, and that helps us: most pieces can go down the side alley and in through the back door in one length, so we can avoid joins that a front-door route would force. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Quiet residential streets off West End Road with drives on most houses. RAF Northolt and the Central line depot cut off some of the obvious through routes. 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. 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. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Freestanding appliance bays split the run, so what looks like one wall of worktop is actually three separate pieces with two exposed ends to polish.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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 someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves. 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.