Kitchen worktops in Castelnau

Yes. Distinctive early Victorian paired villas with tall rooms and deep plans - kitchens usually at the rear or in a lower ground, with 3.5m to 4m runs, high ceilings that allow full-height splashbacks, and space for a proper island in the wider houses. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

1840s stucco villa, Victorian semi, interwar flats and postwar infill. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

The road is a busy artery towards the bridge with red-route style restrictions at peak, so unloading happens in the side turnings; villa front gardens are short with a flight of steps up to a raised entrance. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop splashbacks & upstands, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Same batch, same run, same day. Tall rooms tempt full-height slab splashbacks, and at 2.4m plus these become the heaviest single piece on the job - plan the lift for the splashback, not the top.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Decided before fabrication, not after. 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.