Kitchen worktops in Cubitt Town

Yes. Family houses here have a ground-floor kitchen at the rear with a garden door, usually a U or L of 3m to 4m total run, and a fair number have been extended sideways for a small island. Riverside apartments have compact kitchens with the run interrupted by a balcony door. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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.

1980s-90s riverside terrace and townhouse, post-war estate and recent riverside apartment. A riverside block is a managed building with a booked goods lift, a loading bay and a concierge, and all three have to line up on the same day. The room is square and the plasterboard is not, so the internal corner is recorded as it is rather than as ninety degrees. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

This is the easiest part of the peninsula for a van, with off-street parking and driveways on many of the 1980s houses and level access to the front door. Riverside blocks are the exception, with gated courtyards and lifts sized for furniture rather than 3m slabs. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop design & quotation, 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. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Houses here allow a single-piece run straight through the front door, which is worth taking advantage of instead of defaulting to a joint.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. 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 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 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.