Kitchen worktops in Covent Garden

Yes. Small flats with small kitchens, so 2-2.8m single runs are the norm, often open to the living space, with everything integrated because there is no room for anything freestanding. Layouts are dictated by an existing stack position that cannot be moved. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. The van has to stand through both halves of the day.

Georgian terrace above retail, Victorian model-dwelling block, warehouse conversion and modern apartment. Walls are thick, lime-plastered and built in a soft brick, so they take a scribe well and take a fixing badly. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one.

Pedestrianised streets, timed vehicle bans, Congestion Charge and delivery windows that generally mean an early morning slot. The last stretch is almost always on foot from a loading point, then a narrow street door and steep stairs above a shop or restaurant. A steep pitch shortens the tread and lengthens the reach, which leaves whoever is below carrying most of the weight for the full flight. 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. Nothing is leaned anywhere it could slide down.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. The offcuts finish the room. Plan for a barrow carry of fifty metres or more and pieces short enough to handle without swinging them, because the walk-in rather than the kitchen sets the maximum slab length here.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. A thinner top drops the run against the tiles. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Full height is decided before fabrication, not after. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Less to clean, for whoever cleans it.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. Carcasses are checked for square and fixed back before a stone top goes on them. A new top on a settled run needs the run corrected first.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Breakfast bars get the steel they never had.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. A one-hour window will not hold a two-way job.