Kitchen worktops in Wood Street

Yes. A mix of un-extended terraces with 2.4m galley kitchens and larger Edwardian houses that have gone full-width at the rear with a 4m run and an island. The newer flats near the station have single-wall kitchens against a party wall with no island space. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. It is noted on the job sheet at template so the fitting crew inherit the answer rather than rediscovering it. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian bay-fronted house and recent station-area apartment block. Cornice, picture rails and deep skirting survive in converted rooms, so the run stands off the wall and the back edge follows the units rather than the plaster. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. That is the shape of the day.

The railway splits the area, so streets on either side need approaching separately and the bridge and level crossing points create bottlenecks at peak times. Residential streets are permit-controlled with narrow bays, and terraces have no side access, so the route is front door, hall, through room, kitchen. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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 templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A plumber either side of us. The through-room route means every piece has to clear a pair of internal door openings, and 900mm island slabs frequently will not turn at the second one.

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. Dry-lay first, always. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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.

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. Sound carcasses are the condition. 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.