Kitchen worktops in Temple

Yes. Residential sets within the Inns have small kitchens fitted into rooms that were never designed for them, typically a 1.8-2.6m run against a chimney breast or under a sash window, with wiring and plumbing surface-run in trunking. Everything is a careful retrofit rather than a design exercise, and stone is chosen for a hard-wearing surface in a heritage room rather than for a statement island. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

Inn of Court chambers building with residential sets, listed brick range around a court, postwar rebuild in period style and small flat within a legal building. The rear extension is frequently original rather than added, which means it is solidly built and just as far out of square as the rest of the house. 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 template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

The Temple is a private, gated precinct with controlled vehicle entry, porters and its own rules, so access has to be arranged through the Inn's estates office rather than turned up to. Internally it is cobbles and setts in the courts, narrow historic stairs with worn stone treads, and listed joinery you cannot unhang. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Appliances on site, not on order. Worn stone stair treads are slippery and uneven, and a two-man carry on those with a slab on edge is where people get hurt - use a proper frame and take the extra body.

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. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. 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. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. 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.