Kitchen worktops in Bayswater

Yes. Huge stucco houses cut into six or eight flats, so kitchens are small and often windowless - a 2.2m run with a combination microwave and no dishwasher is common in the letting stock. The better garden-square flats have proper kitchens with a 3m run and a breakfast bar. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

Victorian stucco terrace, multi-flat conversion, hotel conversion and garden-square mansion flat. Floors are the original joists with a later acoustic layer laid over them, and that layer is not flat where it meets the doorways. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Almost all flats are conversions with a shared front door, a wide but long communal stair, and no lift above the second floor. Parking is metered and permanently full, and the hotel traffic on the main roads blocks the kerb all day. Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence. High-turnover rental flats want the cheapest workable spec, so keep it to a plain square-edge quartz with a matching upstand - budget dictates the material here more than taste does.

A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. Corners get their own pieces. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward metre takes the longest. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Inventories record the condition of a kitchen at both ends of a tenancy, which is a practical argument for a surface that looks the same in its fifth year as its first. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Behind the hob is where full height earns its cost.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Timing the two carries is most of the planning.

Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The communal stair is wide and handsome and the flat door at the top of it is a standard leaf, which is where a long piece stops. 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. What is under the old top is the real question.