Kitchen worktops in Kenley

Yes. Houses built into the sides of the Caterham valley, so kitchens often sit at the rear looking out at treetop level with a raised deck beyond. Chalet bungalows have wide shallow kitchens with limited wall-cupboard height; the detached houses take an L plus peninsula rather than a big island. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. Two hours is the realistic figure.

1930s detached, chalet bungalow, 1960s detached on sloping plot and post-war infill. Where the roof has been converted there is usually a steel over the kitchen that went in after the walls, and the run beneath it is worth checking for square. The junction between the old floor and the extension floor is where a run crossing it needs packing before stone goes on. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

The steepest access in the borough. Driveways drop or climb sharply off the road, several properties are reached by steps only, and a number of the lanes are unadopted with poor surfaces. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Where the only way in is a flight of garden steps we size every piece to be a genuine two-man lift, because there is nowhere safe to rest a full-length slab halfway up.

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. 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. 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. 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first. 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.