Kitchen worktops in Battersea

Yes. The artisan cottage streets have very shallow plans where the kitchen fills the whole ground-floor rear, so a single 3m run with a slim return is the realistic maximum. Larger Victorian terraces towards the park take a rear infill with a compact island of around 2m. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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 waste run is planned, not improvised.

Victorian artisan cottage, Late Victorian terrace, Edwardian mansion flat and 2010s riverside apartment. Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. What the old top has been hiding is usually a floor that settled towards the back and units that were never fixed back to the wall. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Cottage streets are narrow, fully permit-controlled and parked solid, with front doors opening straight onto a 1.2m pavement. Ceilings are low and the hall is short, so a slab cannot be swung — it goes in flat and low. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop templating, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us. Cottage kitchens here run out of headroom before they run out of width, so check the height under the stair bulkhead where the run passes beneath it.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. The drawing leaves site complete. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. 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.