Kitchen worktops in Higham Hill

Yes. Interwar semis with a rear kitchen of about 2.6m by 2.4m and a separate dining room, commonly knocked through to give an L-shaped kitchen-diner with 3.5m of run in total. Larder recesses and a rear lobby off the kitchen are typical and usually absorbed into the layout. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

interwar council-built semi, 1930s terrace and post-war maisonette. The chimney breast in the corner has usually been left in place, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends. Where the room has been knocked through to the dining room or opened into a later extension, the two floors rarely sit at the same level and the laser has to be shot across the whole opening from one datum. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Wider roads than central Walthamstow, with side gates on most semis and a fair number of driveways, so slabs can go straight down the side to the back door. Parking restrictions are lighter here than around the town centre. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop installation, worktop replacement and worktop templating, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Side access to the rear is the norm, so long single pieces are achievable and the design does not have to be broken up for the hallway.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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.

These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Appliances on site, not on order. 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.