Kitchen worktops in Stepney Green

Yes. The Georgian houses put the kitchen in the lower ground or rear ground floor with low ceilings, thick masonry and a run of around 3m broken by a chimney breast. Victorian mansion flats have a small original kitchen with a deep window reveal and a larder recess that people keep and shelve out. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. Nothing here is added after the fact.

Georgian merchant house, late-Victorian mansion dwelling and post-war infill block. Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

Several of the older houses are listed or in a conservation area, so scaffolding, hoisting and any external route need agreeing in advance. Front steps up to a raised entrance and a narrow original hallway mean a slab has to come in on edge and turn at the stair foot. A hoisted piece needs a clear drop zone, a lifting plan and someone stationed at street level, none of which gets arranged on the morning. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Worktop templating, worktop design & quotation 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Old masonry walls bow and the chimney breast is never plumb, so template on the finished plaster and expect deep scribes on both ends of the run.

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. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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.