Kitchen worktops in Northwick Park

Yes. Interwar semis alongside purpose-built 1930s flat blocks, where the flats have fixed compact kitchens of around 2.7m against a services wall and cannot be reconfigured. The houses take normal rear extensions, but a large slice of the local work is buy-to-let and short-let refits in the flats with hardwearing, plain material. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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.

1930s semi, 1930s mansion-style flat block and hospital and campus-related accommodation. The original kitchen was a small service room, so what is there now is a knock-through and the junction between the two floors is rarely level. Boxed risers break the run into returns, and every return is a separate piece with its own mitred corner. Cut from the same slab run as the tops.

Flat, wide roads with drives on the houses; the flat blocks have communal entrances, half-landings and generally no lift, which limits piece size to what two people can turn on a stair. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. It decides panel size before anything is cut.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. No stone is ever cut from a plan, which is inconvenient exactly when a programme is tight. Units fitted, fixed and level first. Rental refits want the fewest possible visits, so template, fabricate and fit needs sequencing tightly around tenancy change dates.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. A tall panel that fits at the worktop will stand off the wall at the top unless the wall is dubbed out or the panel is scribed. Scribed, dubbed out, or set proud. Pick one. 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 the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.