Kitchen worktops in Askew Road

Yes. Smaller cottage-scale terraces where the whole ground floor is only about 4.5m wide, so a side return infill only buys another metre and the kitchen ends up as a 3.2m run with a 1.2-1.6m peninsula rather than a full island. Ceiling heights in the rear addition are low, which pushes people toward slim 20mm tops and upstands instead of full-height stone. 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. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

small two-up two-down terrace, late Victorian bay-fronted terrace, flat over shop and modern rear extension. 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. The day is planned backwards from the hall, and the scribing takes longer than the carry. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Narrow streets with parking both sides mean a Luton effectively blocks the road, so a short controlled unload with a spotter is the way to do it. Front doors open straight into a small hall with the stairs immediately in front, so the turn from front door to kitchen is often less than 2m of clear travel. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation, 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. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. The front-door-to-stair distance is the number that matters on these cottages - if you cannot swing it in the hall, it goes over the back fence.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first. 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.