Kitchen worktops in Richmond Hill

Yes. Tall Georgian and Regency houses, many listed, where the kitchen sits in the lower ground or basement with a 2.4m ceiling, a chimney breast and a 3m to 3.5m run along the internal wall, and a separate scullery-style utility beside the vault. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The day is built around that window.

Georgian terrace, Regency villa, Victorian mansion block and listed terrace. Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. Alcoves either side of the breast are rarely the same width and rarely parallel, so each one is templated as its own piece with its own scribe. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

The hill is steep with double yellows on most of the frontage, listed railings that cannot be removed, and a narrow area stair down to the basement door - so slabs go down on edge with a man below and a man above. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. That is part of what the visit is for.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. Listed status rules out cutting back a wall to make a run fit, so the top is templated to the building as found, bows and all.

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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. 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.