Kitchen worktops in Wormholt

Yes. The interwar cottage estate houses were built with a small dedicated kitchen at the rear, roughly 2.4m by 2m, with a larder and a back door onto the garden, and many still have that footprint. Where a rear extension has been added the kitchen becomes an L of about 3m by 2m, but the original external wall usually stays as a nib, which forces a joint or a mitre at the corner. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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.

1920s cottage estate house, interwar municipal terrace, postwar infill flats and housing association maisonette. Walls are dense block or in-situ concrete with a bonded plaster, so the bottom course of tiles brings plaster with it when the old top comes off. Dense concrete takes adhesive better than fixings, which actually suits a large bonded panel. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.

Estate layout with front gardens, low walls and gates, and reasonably wide streets, so vehicle access is easier than most of W12 - the constraint is the narrow original front door and a hall barely 900mm wide. Some properties still have the original side alley to the garden, which is the better route if the gate can come off its hinges. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. The retained nib of the old back wall is where these kitchens want a mitre, and getting that internal corner tight is what the job is judged on.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. 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. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. 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. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed. 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.