Kitchen worktops in Waterloo

Yes. The small surviving cottage terraces have kitchens under 7 square metres where a single run and a slim return is all that fits, and many are listed or in a conservation area so layouts barely change. Warehouse and office conversions above have open-plan kitchens set against a structural wall with a peninsula facing the living space. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. Two hours is the realistic figure.

Early Victorian artisan cottage, Postwar council block, Co-operative housing and Converted warehouse and office. A small room puts the sink, hob and tap cut-outs close together on one short length, and the bridge of stone left between them decides whether it can be cut in one piece. 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 laser picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

This is the hardest access area in the borough — congestion charge, red routes on almost every approach, no residents' bays available to trades and constant pedestrian traffic. Everything is booked, early and short. 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. 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 replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. In the listed cottages you cannot chase walls or fix through original fabric, so upstands get bonded rather than mechanically fixed and the tolerances have to be right first time.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. Corners get their own pieces. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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.

These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. 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.