Kitchen worktops in Westcombe Park

Yes. Wide Edwardian semis and villas with generous rear rooms, most kitchens are already knocked through into the old dining room or extended into the garden, giving long straight runs of 3.5m and up and a genuine island rather than a peninsula. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The frame is filled back to front when the bay is booked short.

late Victorian villa, Edwardian bay-fronted semi and 1930s detached. Deep original skirting is often left in behind the units, standing them off the wall, so the back edge of the stone is plotted where the carcasses actually sit. 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. A scribe of twenty millimetres is machined, not fettled on site.

Mostly straightforward: wide front paths, off-street parking on a fair number of plots and gently sloping roads down toward the railway, though streets nearest the station fill with commuter parking through the day. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. This is island country, pieces are big and heavy, so check the floor structure and whether the route round the side of the house beats the hallway.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Dry-assembled to the shape of your run. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Offered up twice, bonded once. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

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 fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A cleared crew arrives with its paperwork done. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Lower ground floor kitchens are reached by a stair with a winder in it, and the head height over that winder is lower than the room at either end. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. An old house eats more slab than a new one.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. Handling counts are decided here, not on the pavement.

Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Sealant seals. It does not fit.

Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. These were built late enough to have a damp course and proper footings, so the front of the house is close to true and the rear addition holding the kitchen is the part that has dropped. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. Older houses come off the bench with longer scribes.