Kitchen worktops in Hornsey

Yes. A lot of two-bed conversion flats where the kitchen is at the back with a single 2.4m to 3m run and a washing machine under the counter because there is no utility. The newer blocks around the old Town Hall site are open-plan with a compact island and a fully integrated appliance set. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. We would rather ask than guess.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian flat conversion and 2020s Town Hall quarter apartment. The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. The day is planned backwards from the hall, and the scribing takes longer than the carry. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

The High Street is a constant bus corridor with red-route style restrictions at peak, so timing matters. New blocks need a booked service lift and dust sheets over the lobby finishes; the older conversions have a shared street door and a stair used by three flats. 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. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, 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. 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. Conversion kitchens here often sit on a solid ground-floor slab that has been overlaid twice - measure finished floor level at both ends of the run, not just at the sink.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The units stay, the surface changes. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. 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. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. No stone is cut from a plan. 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.