Kitchen worktops in Lower Clapton

Yes. Georgian terraces around the square with small original rooms and listed constraints, plus long Victorian terraces mostly in flats where the kitchen sits in the back addition at about 3m. Whole-house work is growing and tends to mean a rear extension with a peninsula rather than a full return. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Georgian terrace, Victorian terrace, post-war estate and conversion flat. A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. The laser plots the bow along the back of the run, which is why a tape reading taken beforehand never matches. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

Lower Clapton Road carries buses with restricted loading and the side streets are permit-only with filters. The Georgian houses have narrow original doors, steep stairs and a level change between the front and rear rooms. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. That is part of what the visit is for.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. In the Georgian houses the floor drops a step between front and rear, so set the units off a datum line rather than the floor or the finished top will read as sloping.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. 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. 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.