Kitchen worktops in Angel

Yes. A dense mix of period flats and newer apartments, where period conversions put the kitchen in a rear room or a former closet wing on a 2.4-3m run, while converted warehouses and newer blocks give open-plan runs with an island. Whole-house Georgian jobs put the kitchen at lower ground with garden access and a long single wall. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

Georgian terrace, early Victorian terrace, warehouse conversion and new-build apartment. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. 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. No stone is ever cut from a plan.

Upper Street is a red route with bus lanes, City Road and Pentonville Road are red routes on the southern edge, and the side streets are controlled Monday to Friday with some seven-day bays near the Green. Several surrounding streets sit inside camera-enforced traffic filters, so the route in for a van is not the route a satnav gives you. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. 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 replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. Check the filtered-street layout before fit day, because a wrong turn through a camera gate costs more than the delivery and the legal approach usually adds a long carry.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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. Units kept, surface changed. 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.