Kitchen worktops in Hampton Hill

Yes. A high street of Victorian shops and cottages with tight first-floor flats, and behind it Victorian terraces and interwar semis where the kitchen is a rear room of roughly 2.6m by 3.5m, generally refitted in place with an L of 3m and 1.8m. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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 terrace, Victorian villa, 1930s semi and modern flats over shops. The structure below is commercial, so the floor is often timber over a shop ceiling and the load path under an island is worth thinking about. The fitting itself is about squaring up to walls that look modern and are not: block or breeze walls with a skim that has been patched over decades, so we still dry-lay and scribe rather than trust the template edge. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

High Street loading is timed and the parade is busy, so flats above shops mean a street door, a straight steep stair and a right-angle turn at the top; the residential roads behind have driveways and are far easier. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating, in that order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us. Flats above the shops have a stair with a tight top landing, so anything over 2.4m has to be jointed - measure the landing, not just the stair width.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. 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. 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. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. 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.