Kitchen worktops in North Wembley

Yes. Classic interwar semi layout: a small square kitchen at the back with the larder alcove knocked out, and about half the stock has taken the side return or a modest rear extension to make one wider room. Where the extension has gone in you get a 3m to 3.6m run against the flank wall plus a short island or peninsula, and a separate utility only if the garage has been converted. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The day is built around that window.

1930s semi, 1930s short terrace and 1950s infill. The kitchen is usually a rear room extended into the garden, with the original external wall now standing inside the run. Where the room has been knocked through to the dining room or opened into a later extension, the two floors rarely sit at the same level and the laser has to be shot across the whole opening from one datum. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Front driveways and dropped kerbs on most of the semis, so the van gets close and a slab can be walked up a short path. Side gates are typically 800mm to 900mm and the side alley is the fastest route into a rear extension if the fence panel can come out. 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. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. The laser records it along with everything else.

Worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop design & quotation, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. The flank wall in these extensions bows over 3m more often than people expect, so template after plastering and expect the back edge to need easing.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. Send photographs of every corner of the room and it gets priced properly first time. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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 someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. Material is quoted as a supply range and the labour lines separately, because an installed rate per square metre is not a real number. Every line has a reason next to it. 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.