Kitchen worktops in Cricklewood

Yes. Edwardian terraces with narrow back-addition kitchens on one side of the Broadway and 1930s mansion blocks on the other, where flats keep a fixed galley of about 2.7m because the risers cannot move. A lot of the terraces are converted into upper and lower maisonettes, so the kitchen is often on the first floor with no possibility of extending. 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. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Edwardian terrace, 1930s mansion block and new-build flats on the Broadway. Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. A mansion block is a logistics job before it is a stone job. What is under the old top is the real question.

The Broadway is an A road with loading restrictions and bus lanes, so vans park in side streets and the crew carries. Mansion blocks vary wildly, some with a small original lift too shallow for a full slab and a stone staircase as the only alternative. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because a cut-out in the wrong place means a new piece. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted. First-floor maisonette kitchens are the recurring headache: the piece has to go up a domestic staircase with a half turn, so plan the joint before quoting a single length.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. One datum for the whole room. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. 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.