Kitchen worktops in New Southgate

Yes. Small Victorian terraces with 2.4m rear kitchens sit next to newly built regeneration flats with open-plan kitchen-living rooms and an integrated appliance wall. The new-build work is nearly all upgrading from the developer's laminate without altering the layout, since the units and services are fixed. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. It is noted on the job sheet at template so the fitting crew inherit the answer rather than rediscovering it. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Victorian terrace, post-war council block and 2010s-2020s regeneration blocks. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. Where a client wants a full-height piece behind the hob, it usually sits in the old chimney recess, and that recess is rarely square top to bottom or side to side, so it has to be templated as a trapezium rather than a rectangle. Decided before fabrication starts.

Industrial and railway land breaks the road pattern up, so routes are indirect; new blocks have loading bays and lifts, while the older terraces have no drives and tight permit parking near the station. 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. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. That is agreed at template, not on fitting day.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Developer kitchens use 600mm carcasses with a chipboard top glued down, so allow time to break out the old top cleanly without damaging the units the customer wants to keep.

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. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Height change is checked before we cut. 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. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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 a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.