Kitchen worktops in Wimbledon

Yes. Around the Broadway and the streets running up towards the Ridgway you get Victorian and Edwardian houses where the original back addition has been opened into the rear reception, so the kitchen ends up L-shaped with a run down the flank wall and a peninsula where the old wall stood. Newer apartment blocks above the town centre are mostly straight galley runs with a breakfast bar returning off the end. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Late Victorian terrace, Edwardian semi, 1930s mansion block and 2000s town-centre apartment. The bay at the front and the back addition at the rear were built to different standards, and the kitchen is nearly always in the weaker of the two. The day is planned backwards from the hall. That is the shape of the day.

The town centre one-way system and the bus lanes on the Broadway leave almost no legal standing time, and the residential streets either side are permit-only with short single-yellow windows. Anything going into a flat above the shops is a stair-only carry from a shared street door. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, 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. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. The knock-through peninsula is where the money and the risk sit, you are butting new stone against a wall the builder made good after removing a chimney breast, so template after plastering, never before.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. 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. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. 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. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.