Kitchen worktops in Bromley Common

Yes. A lot of stock with the original small rear kitchen still in place, often 2.4-2.8m of run with the boiler on the wall and a back door in the middle of the elevation. Where extensions have gone on they are usually modest rear infills rather than full-width. 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. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. One trip is always better than three.

inter-war semi, post-war council-built terrace, 1960s maisonette and Victorian cottage. Original quarry-tiled floors sit lower than a later screed, so a run crossing that junction needs the units packed to one level. Where the room has been knocked through to the dining room or opened into a later extension, the two floors rarely sit at the same level and the laser has to be shot across the whole opening from one datum. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

Front gardens converted to hardstanding on the private roads make it easy, but the ex-local-authority terraces have shared paths and no vehicle access to the rear, so it is a front-door carry through a narrow hall. 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. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Boiler pipework and a back door swing eat into the run here, so the template has to work around fixed services rather than the other way round.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Height change is checked before we cut. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Where the wall cannot be made good, setting the stone deliberately proud on a subframe with a shadow gap reads as a detail rather than a bad fit. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Appliances on site, not on order. 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.