Kitchen worktops in Crouch End

Yes. Side-return infills are the default job here - the old 1.8m galley in the back addition becomes a 3.5m run with a small island or a peninsula, usually with a rooflight overhead. Above the Broadway there are conversion flats where the kitchen is a 2.4m run in a former reception with the cornice still running over it. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian conversion flat and 1930s mansion block. The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. The laser plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

Everything is on a hill. Crouch End Hill and Crouch Hill are steep enough that a loaded trolley needs two people on the downhill side, and the Broadway has short-stay bays and heavy bus traffic. Top-floor conversion flats have no lift and a narrow Victorian dogleg stair. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The laser records it along with everything else.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. Conversion flats above the shops have springy joisted floors - check deflection under the island position before committing to a 20mm slab.

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. The units stay, the surface changes. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. 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.