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. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. One trip is always better than three.

1890s-1900s red-brick mansion flats around garden squares, Victorian terrace, Edwardian terrace with front bay and conversion maisonette. Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. Mansion-block kitchens usually have a serviced riser or boxed pipework somewhere in the run, and the boxing is rarely the same depth from one end to the other, so the template takes the depth at worktop height at several points rather than one reading. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

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. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Sockets final before template. Old cage lifts here are for people, not stone - assume the stairs and plan a joint at the sink accordingly.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The units stay, the surface changes. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate has been covering it up. 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. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. The wall has to be ready. 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.