Kitchen worktops in Upper Norwood

Yes. Substantial villas on the hill with large but oddly shaped kitchens, often in a lower ground floor or rear return with a step down and a low window head. The Beulah Hill detached properties run to full island kitchens with utility and pantry; the conversions are small and constrained. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

large Victorian villa, villa converted to flats, Beulah Hill detached and 1930s mansion flats. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. Long perimeter runs and an island mean level has to hold across the whole room, so the templater sets a single datum and works every run and the island off it rather than levelling each wall in isolation. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

The steepest streets in the borough, with houses set well above or below road level and long flights of front steps. Lower ground floor kitchens mean carrying stone down as well as along. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. That is part of what the visit is for.

Worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Low ceilings in lower ground floor kitchens mean you cannot tilt a long piece to get it round a corner, so anything over 2.4m gets a designed joint before it leaves the shop.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every join sits over a gable. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. 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. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. One visit, our own installers. 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.