Kitchen worktops in London Fields

Yes. Victorian terraces facing the park, many reverted to whole houses, where a side-return or rear extension creates a kitchen-diner with a 4m run and an island. Behind the market the converted industrial buildings give large open-plan kitchens with long single runs and few obstructions. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

Victorian terrace, warehouse conversion, above-shop flat and post-war infill. The party wall is the straightest surface in the house and everything else has moved away from it over a century. Alcoves either side of the breast are rarely the same width and rarely parallel, so each one is templated as its own piece with its own scribe. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

The streets around the park are permit-only, filtered and busy with pedestrians and cyclists, and market days make the Broadway Market end effectively impassable for a van. Extension jobs usually allow a carry through the house or via a side gate straight into the rear. Rear access usually lets us fit longer pieces whole, so the join count ends up decided by the slab rather than by the building. 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 templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Units fitted, fixed and level first. On extension jobs check for a side gate first, because going in through the garden avoids the hall and the stair entirely and makes a one-piece island top possible.

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. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. Shape first, area second. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the laser plots the intermediate points. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. 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.