Kitchen worktops in Coldharbour

Yes. Postwar estate housing with small kitchens planned around a fixed sink under the window and a boiler cupboard; runs are 2m to 2.6m and worktops are usually replaced piecemeal rather than as part of a redesign. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

postwar LCC estate, 1950s-60s maisonette block and 1970s terrace. An ex-council house is solidly built to a standard plan, with the kitchen at the rear and a back door next to it. Unit height is the other issue: legs sit on an uneven screed or hard concrete with no give, so the laser reads the top of every carcass rather than assuming they share a height. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Estate layout with parking courts and rear footpaths, and several maisonette blocks reached by an external stair with a tight turn at the top. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The laser records it along with everything else.

Worktop replacement, worktop fabrication and worktop templating, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Those stair turns on the maisonettes cap the piece length — measure the turn, not just the doorway.

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. 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. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Found at template, not on fit day. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak. 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.