Kitchen worktops in Brentham Garden Suburb

Yes. Small original kitchens in Arts and Crafts cottages with limited permitted development, so the work is making a compact 2.5m to 3.5m kitchen function properly. Honed finishes and simple square edges suit the houses. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Edwardian Arts and Crafts cottage, garden suburb terrace and 1900s-1910s cooperative housing. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. Lath-and-plaster on the party wall and the chimney breast returns almost never runs true, so a 100mm upstand bedded on silicone is the honest answer here — it rides the bow and hides the junction the worktop can never close on its own. Decided before fabrication starts.

Conservation area with narrow lanes, greens and hedged frontages, few driveways, and controls on skips and scaffolding that need arranging well ahead. 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. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Sealed before we leave. The conservation controls mean the kitchen stays exactly where it is, so this is a fitting and scribing problem rather than a design one.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. The drawing leaves site complete. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. 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.