Kitchen worktops in Kensal Town

Yes. Small estate flats and terraces near the canal and the Great Western line, with kitchens under 2.5m of run and appliances stacked rather than spread. A few canal-side conversions have larger open-plan kitchens with an island, but they are the exception. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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.

post-war estate block, Victorian terrace and canal-side conversion. The rear extension is frequently original rather than added, which means it is solidly built and just as far out of square as the rest of the house. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

The canal and railway limit through-routes, so several blocks are reached from one side only and the last stretch is a footpath. Estate entrances are fob-controlled with narrow lobby doors and a lift that is often the only one for the whole block. 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. 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 splashbacks & upstands, 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A plumber either side of us. Where the only route in is a footpath from the road, work out the carrying distance before quoting - it is frequently 80m-plus with a kerb and a ramp.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. 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. Where the wall cannot be made good, setting the stone deliberately proud on a subframe with a shadow gap reads as a detail rather than a bad fit. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. 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.