Kitchen worktops in Colindale

Yes. One of the densest concentrations of new apartments in London, where kitchens are open-plan single walls or L-shapes of 2.7m to 3.4m with an integrated hob, oven and full-height fridge already in place. Nearly all the work is replacing developer laminate with stone inside a kitchen nobody wants to reconfigure, plus a matching upstand and window sill. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

2010s-2020s high-rise apartment, regeneration low-rise and 1930s semi at the edges. Concrete panel walls bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and the back edge is cut to follow it. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.

Towers with booked goods lifts, concierge sign-in, insurance documentation and time-limited loading bays, and underground car parks with height barriers that stop a standard stone van. Lift internal dimensions decide the maximum piece. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. Joint positions follow from that.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Measure the goods lift and the flat's front door before quoting, because on these blocks the building, not the kitchen, sets the largest piece you can deliver.

The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Carcasses have to be sound first. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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 template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.