Kitchen worktops in Deptford

Yes. Three distinct stocks: surviving Georgian houses with tight basement or ground-rear kitchens, estate flats with 2.4m single-run galleys, and riverside apartments with island-and-run open plan. The Georgian houses are the fiddly ones, with no square corners and thick uneven walls. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

Georgian terrace, dense Victorian terrace, 1960s-70s tower and slab estate and 2010s riverside apartment block. The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. What is under the old top is the real question.

Congested narrow streets, market days closing the high street, estate parking courts with height barriers, and riverside blocks that need a booked lift and loading bay. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop fabrication, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Nested for the job in front of us. Height barriers over the estate car parks catch people out — check the van clears them or you're carrying from the road.

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. One datum for the whole room. 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. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. 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. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. 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.