Kitchen worktops in Hampton Wick

Yes. Small Georgian and Victorian cottages in a compact village layout, with kitchens often only 2m to 2.6m of run and a doorway at each end, so the design is about tall storage and a single well-planned run rather than an island. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

Georgian cottage, Victorian terrace, Victorian villa and modern riverside flats. A two-up two-down has a kitchen that was never designed to be one, so the run is short, the ceiling is low and every millimetre of depth gets argued over. The day is planned backwards from the hall, and the scribing takes longer than the carry. That is the shape of the day.

The village sits at the foot of Kingston Bridge, so traffic queues through it most of the day, the streets are narrow with residents' bays, and many cottages open straight onto the pavement with no front garden to stage the load in. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us. Doors opening straight onto the street mean the slab goes from tailgate to threshold in one move, so the van has to be right at the door or the job stalls.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. 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. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. 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.