Kitchen worktops in Roxbourne

Yes. Repetitive interwar estate housing where every kitchen is effectively the same box, which makes it good like-for-like replacement territory: a 2.7m run with a return of about 1.2m and a back door in the corner. Extensions are less common than in the wealthier Harrow districts, so footprints usually stay as built. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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 estate semi, interwar terrace and 1960s maisonette block. Walls are dense block or in-situ concrete with a bonded plaster, so the bottom course of tiles brings plaster with it when the old top comes off. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. That is the shape of the day.

Uniform estate roads with drives on many houses and consistent side gate widths, which makes access predictable; maisonette blocks need a shared external stair and a two-person lift up. 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. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, 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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. Appliances on site, not on order. Uniform stock means a template from one house nearly fits the next, but never assume it, because 1930s builders varied the back-door corner by an inch or two.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Eased in, never forced. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. A template booked hopefully around another trade is the commonest cause of a wasted visit. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.