Kitchen worktops in Fitzrovia

Yes. Mostly apartments, many carved out of former commercial floors, which gives an open-plan kitchen along one wall of a large room at 3-4m and sometimes a genuine island where the floorplate allows. The older above-shop flats are the opposite, tiny and tucked behind a hall with services in the worst possible corner. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it.

Georgian terrace above retail, warehouse and office conversion, 1930s block and modern apartment. A flat over a shop is reached by a separate street door and a straight steep stair, and that stair is the whole access question. Runs are short, joins are few and the biggest single question is whether we can go in through the back, a rear door straight from the garden into the kitchen usually lets us fit long pieces whole, whereas a mid-terrace with no side gate means everything comes through the front and may need splitting. Priced from the building, not from a rate card.

Congestion Charge zone, Monday to Saturday controlled parking, delivery restrictions on the busier streets, and buildings that open straight onto the pavement with no forecourt. The converted commercial buildings have goods lifts worth booking, while the Georgian above-shop flats have none at all. 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. That is why the fitting line on a quote reflects manpower and time rather than square metres. It appears as its own line rather than buried in a rate.

Worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop design & quotation, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. In the converted commercial buildings a full-length slab usually goes up in the goods lift, so check it before templating instead of designing in joins you do not need.

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. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Written to be read by whoever is paying. 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.