Kitchen worktops in Golden Lane

Yes. The Golden Lane flats were built small and efficient, and the kitchens are the smallest residential kitchens you will template in the City - often a single run of 1.8-2.4m with 500-550mm deep units rather than the modern 600mm. Original built-in features and the listed status mean the job is usually a precise like-for-like replacement, sometimes on non-standard depths that have to be cut rather than assumed. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

1950s listed estate block, maisonette with double-height living room, compact one-bedroom flat and listed crescent block. These are built in dense concrete, so support for a peninsula or an end panel goes in with proper anchors rather than plugs. Unit height is the other issue: legs sit on an uneven screed or hard concrete with no give, so the laser reads the top of every carcass rather than assuming they share a height. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

Deliveries come off narrow surrounding streets with almost no loading provision, then through a courtyard on foot to a single lift per core - and the lift cars are genuinely small, so a slab may need to go up the stairs instead. The estate is listed, so nothing gets propped, taped or fixed to walls and finishes along the route. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The laser records it along with everything else.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Measure the unit depth rather than assuming 600mm - a lot of these kitchens are shallower, and a standard-depth top will foul the opposite wall in a 1.8m room.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. 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. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the laser plots the intermediate points. 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. 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.