Kitchen worktops in Norbiton

Yes. Modest Victorian and Edwardian terraces with rear kitchens of about 2.4m by 3m, commonly opened into the dining room to give an L of 3m and 1.8m, alongside estate flats where the job is a straight replacement of a 2m run and upstands. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace, 1960s and 1970s council estate and 2020s estate regeneration. The rear wall is usually a single brick thick and has been rendered, patched and re-rendered, so it bows in and out along the length of the run. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the laser picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

Terraced streets with permit bays and heavy hospital traffic nearby, no off-street parking on most roads, and rear access via a shared alley that is usually blocked by bins. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. The laser records it along with everything else.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating, 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Knocked-through terraces leave a stub of chimney breast mid-run, so the top gets scribed around a pier rather than running straight.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Carcasses have to be sound first. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. 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.

These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. 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. One visit, our own installers. 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.