Kitchen worktops in Barons Court

Yes. The garden-square mansion flats are laid out with the kitchen at the rear over a light well, small and tall, typically 2.2-2.8m of run with a high ceiling and original sash, and the boiler flue fixed on the outside wall. Most work is like-for-like replacement in an unchanged layout, sometimes with the addition of a slim peninsula where an old servant's passage has been opened up. A permit covering the street is permission to park rather than a space reserved on it, and on a full street the difference is the whole morning. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. The strip-out waits until the new stone has somewhere to stand.

1890s-1900s red-brick mansion flats around garden squares, Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace with front bay and conversion maisonette. The kitchen was a service room at the back of the flat, so it is a long way from the front door along a corridor with two turns in it. A mansion block is a logistics job before it is a stone job. The fabric gets checked while it is open.

Purpose-built blocks with a communal front door, stone stairs and either no lift or a small original cage lift that is not rated for material loads. Streets around the squares are permit-only with narrow bays, and the squares themselves are private gardens so there is no vehicle route through - the carry is round the perimeter. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. The ceiling over a staircase limits a standing panel as much as the walls.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Less to clean, for whoever cleans it. Old cage lifts here are for people, not stone - assume the stairs and plan a joint at the sink accordingly.

A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The island top is the one that may want its own slab. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. Full height wants a flat wall behind it. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. An owner can wait for it; a void period cannot. 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.

Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Freeholder consent, a works agreement and proof of insurance are often wanted before a van is allowed to unload. Taking the old tops off is also the first honest look at what has been going on underneath them. A sound carcass takes stone; a soft one gets replaced first.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Walls are solid brick with lime plaster and a hard skim over the top, and that skim comes away in sheets when old tiles are taken back. The lift car is usually too short and too low to take a full-length piece flat or on edge, so stone either goes up the communal stairs with their half-landings and winders, or the run is designed with joins that suit the staircase rather than the kitchen. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Level the units first, measure the shape second.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Sash windows sit in deep reveals with a working box behind the lining, so a run dying into one has to clear more than the plaster. Waste from the old top goes down in loads the lift and the building will accept rather than in one trip. Everything the last fit ignored is visible for a morning.