Kitchen worktops in Hanwell

Yes. Terraces with rear kitchen extensions and side-return infills, largely first proper renovations on a controlled budget. Runs of 3.5m to 4.5m, single-bowl undermount, quartz chosen over granite on price. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, 1930s semi and Hanwell village older stock. Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. What is under the old top is the real question.

The Uxbridge Road and the approaches to the viaduct congest badly, terraces have no driveways, and the streets near the station are permit-controlled. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating, 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. A lot of these terraces still have the original outside WC standing in the rear return, so the top has to stop and restart around it rather than run through.

Rooflights along a side return mean the worktop is lit from directly above all day, which shows every ripple in a surface and every gap at a scribe. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The join is the last thing finished. 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.