Kitchen worktops in Battersea Park

Yes. Mansion flats facing the park have kitchens carved from original service rooms, deep but narrow, with a run down one wall and a tall larder unit where the old scullery door was. Owners commonly open the kitchen to a reception room, which puts a peninsula in the structural opening. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Edwardian mansion block, Victorian villa and Interwar purpose-built flat. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. 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. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

Mansion blocks have wide communal stairs but many have no lift or only a small original passenger lift, and porters restrict working hours. Flat entrance doors are often original and narrower than the corridor suggests. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. Peninsulas set into a structural opening need the finished opening measured after the steel is cased, because the casing adds 40 to 60mm each side that the architect's drawing ignores.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. One datum for the whole room. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.