Kitchen worktops in Berrylands

Yes. Very uniform interwar suburban stock - the same rear kitchen footprint repeated street after street, usually extended straight back to give a 4m galley or an L with a 3.6m main run, and a utility carved off beside the back door. 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. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

1930s semi, 1930s detached, postwar infill and modern flats. Cottage estate houses were built to a small number of standard plans, so the kitchen is compact, roughly square and predictable in the good sense. The ragged band left when old tiles and laminate come off together is what usually decides upstand over full height. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.

Quiet residential roads, off-street driveways at nearly every house, and dropped kerbs that let the van get within a few metres of the front door - about as easy as access gets in the borough. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. 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 installation, worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Sealed before we leave. Because the houses repeat, so do the mistakes - the original kitchen window sits low, so upstands regularly clash with the sill and need cutting down.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Corners get their own pieces. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. 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.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. 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.