Kitchen worktops in Belgravia

Yes. The stucco terraces put the kitchen in the lower ground floor, usually as part of a basement remodel with a lightwell and a rear vault, so the room is long, narrow and artificially lit. Islands are common but slim - 900mm wide rather than 1.2m - and the material is almost always a large-format marble or a marble-look sintered slab. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The day is built around that window.

Grade II stucco terrace, Cubitt townhouse, mews house and period mansion flat. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. The second thing is the carry route: front door, narrow hall, a turn at the stairs and often a step down into the extension, which can mean a piece that would template in one length has to be split to physically get into the room. Priced from the building, not from a rate card.

Listed status and estate landlord consent govern everything, works hours are policed by the managing agent and neighbours, skips are effectively banned so waste goes out by hand, and slabs come down an external area stair or through the front door and down a stone flight with a tight turn at the bottom. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop templating and worktop installation, 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. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Basement kitchens here run long and thin, so the slab has to be brought in on edge down a stair with limited headroom - measure the stair soffit, that is what limits piece length, not the room.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Better on the quote than in a variation. 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.

Access in a tenanted flat depends on the tenant, so the template and fitting dates are agreed with whoever actually holds the keys. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Nothing payable until template. 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.