Kitchen worktops in Upton Park

Yes. Large multi-generational households are common, so kitchens get pushed to the back of the house and extended, with 3m to 4m of run, a big freestanding range cooker and heavy-duty use rather than a display island. A number of houses have a second prep kitchen or utility area added off the main one. The practical answer is to check the fixture list before the date is offered, because a template slot lost to a road closure cannot be recovered that week. Upstands travel in a crate and can wait on the van, which gives some flexibility a full-height panel does not. That is why they are crated the way they are.

Edwardian terrace, converted terrace flat and 2010s onwards stadium-site apartment block. 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. Every socket, switch and any USB point has to be cut out of the stone to the actual measured position, so the template has to be taken with the faceplates off and the back boxes visible. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.

The market street and the surrounding shopping parades are congested through the day with loading restrictions, so residential drops are best mid-morning off the side streets. The redeveloped stadium site apartments have their own service entrance and lift booking system, quite unlike the terraces around them. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. Where the route is tight we break a long splashback at a natural vertical joint instead of forcing one panel through. Joint positions follow from that.

Worktop installation, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop design & quotation, in that order. A second kitchen or a kitchenette in an annexe is a small job with the same fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines as a large one. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Heavy cooking use here means people want deep upstands and a solid splashback behind the range, not a 6mm glass panel.

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. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. Corners get their own pieces. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. It is the slow part of the day and it should be. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. 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.