Kitchen worktops in Canonbury

Yes. Larger period houses where the kitchen has usually been moved into a rear extension at garden level, giving a squared-off room with a 3.5-4m run and a true island. The conversion flats off the main streets are the opposite job, a single 2.4m run in a former back bedroom with the boiler above it. 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. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Georgian square terrace, Victorian villa, Edwardian terrace and conversion flat. The party wall is the straightest surface in the house and everything else has moved away from it over a century. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Traffic filters close several through routes and the CPZ is permit-heavy, so the van often stops a street away from the address. Long front gardens and railed steps make for a ten to twenty metre carry before the door, then a straight hall to the rear. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. Rear extensions here are frequently new build butted against old brick, so allow a movement gap at the junction rather than running one uninterrupted top across the old and new wall line.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. 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.