Kitchen worktops in Friern Barnet

Yes. Ordinary terraces and semis with rear kitchens, plus a distinctive body of apartments converted from the old asylum buildings where kitchens sit inside listed shells with huge ceiling heights, deep reveals and windows that cannot be touched. Those conversions need runs planned around fixed structure rather than around cabinetry. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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. We would rather ask than guess.

Victorian and Edwardian terrace, 1930s semi and gated conversion of the former hospital. Edwardian terraces are wider and taller than the Victorian houses next to them, so the kitchen usually takes a full-width rear room rather than a narrow outrigger. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

The gated conversion estate has security barriers, a one-way internal road and controlled parking, so deliveries must be pre-registered; the surrounding streets are ordinary permit-controlled suburbia with some driveways. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation, 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. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us. In the listed conversions the walls are solid and thick with deep window reveals, so returns into the reveal have to be templated individually and cannot be assumed square.

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 template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. One datum for the whole room. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed. 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.