Home ground — the workshop is on Hookstone Chase and half the vans sleep there. Surveys inside three working days, often next-day. The Victorian and Edwardian stock either side of the Stray keeps our restoration diary full: original pine blocks under carpet, hall-and-front-room runs that want re-levelling, and herringbone where the 1930s semis open their kitchens. Knaresborough’s older cottages bring us more subfloor work than board work — lime, stone flags and joists that have moved for a century — and we quote those honestly: preparation first, pattern second. Recent months on the sheet: a chevron landing off Duchy Road, two full-house restorations near Kings Road, and the steady run of lounges and kitchen-diners that keeps two vans inside HG postcodes most weeks.

Twenty to thirty minutes out, and where most of our new-build and extension work sits. New screed is the theme here, which means the carbide meter travels: an extension slab poured in spring is rarely ready for oak by summer, and we would rather tell you that at the survey than argue about a cupped floor in February. The Wetherby kitchen-diner in our gallery — fitting held nine days for readings — is the standard we hold everyone to, including ourselves. Boroughbridge and Ripon book best midweek, and both reward the early call: slabs out there are poured thick and dry slowly.

The forty-minute edge of the patch. We take fewer, larger jobs out here — whole ground floors, showrooms and clinic refits where the travel earns its place in the schedule — and we say so plainly at booking. Commercial out-of-hours work in north Leeds runs on the same fixed-quote basis as everything else, with RAMS and induction paperwork supplied up front. Surveys this side group on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so a Monday call usually sees Elena the same week; fitting follows the ordinary three-week rhythm once the readings clear.

Ring anyway. If the job is unusual enough — a listed building, a big restoration, a pattern someone else has walked away from — the radius flexes. The furthest we have fitted is a listed farmhouse outside Skipton, for the sake of its 1880s elm boards. What never flexes is the method: readings first, fixed quote, and the same straight edge at handover. If we are wrong for the job, the worst you get is the name of someone nearer we trust.

Survey inside three working days everywhere above, with next-day common in HG1 to HG3. Quotes land within 48 hours wherever the survey happened. Fitting lead time runs two to three weeks in the home patch and three to four at the edges — stretching only when acclimatisation or a wet slab says it must, and never because the diary was oversold.