Kitchen worktops in Northwood Hills

Yes. 1930s semis with modest rear kitchens, side-return infills producing a 4m galley, and a high proportion of straightforward laminate-to-stone upgrades on existing units. 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. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The day is built around that window.

1930s semi, interwar terrace, parade flat and postwar infill. An infill house is built to modern standards on an old plot, so the room is square even though the site around it is not. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. That is the shape of the day.

The Joel Street parade is busy with short-stay bays, but the residential streets have drives. The ground genuinely slopes here, which makes trolley work harder than the map suggests. 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. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. On these streets the van often cannot park level, so decide your lift-off point before you arrive with a loaded A-frame.

A galley run down a side-return extension usually measures longer than a slab will give in one length, so a join is designed in from the start rather than discovered. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. Real angles, not plan angles. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. 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 ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Plumber either side of us. 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.