Kitchen worktops in Sands End

Yes. The old cottage terraces have very small footprints, with kitchens of about 2.2-2.6m and rear additions too narrow to take an island of any kind. The redeveloped industrial land next to them delivers new apartments and townhouses with open-plan kitchens on a 3-3.5m run plus an island, all with fixed underfloor heating and services that dictate exactly where a socket or a downdraught can sit. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Victorian artisan cottage terrace, former gasworks and industrial site redevelopment, riverside apartment block and modern courtyard townhouse. Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. The template records that corner as it is, so the mitre closes tight instead of being cut to a theoretical 90 degrees. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

Ongoing construction across the regeneration area means temporary road layouts, contractor gates and hoarding lines that change month to month, so the approach needs confirming on the day. In finished blocks it is the standard managed routine - booked bay, goods lift, corridor protection - while the cottage streets have no loading bays and heavy resident parking. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. That is part of what the visit is for.

Worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop templating, 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. Appliances on site, not on order. In the new-build townhouses the underfloor heating manifolds sit in the utility run, so agree cut-outs and access panels with the M and E drawings before templating.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. The bench proves it before the van does. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Internal corners are machined with a radius and polished, and kept well clear of any join or cut-out. Machined to the real line. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.