Kitchen worktops in Kensington

Yes. Two dominant jobs: townhouses off the High Street with the kitchen in the lower ground and a light shaft or vault at the front, and mansion flats where two flats have been laterally joined and the kitchen has been moved from the old rear service position into the middle of the plan with a 2.8-3.4m island. Lateral flats also throw up long uninterrupted runs against a structural wall, sometimes 4m plus, which is where joint placement earns its money. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Georgian and early Victorian townhouse, red-brick Queen Anne revival terrace, Edwardian mansion block and lateral conversion flat. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints.

Mansion blocks are the constraint - porters control the goods entrance, works are usually restricted to weekday mid-morning to mid-afternoon, and the service lift is the only one you are allowed to use with materials. Measure the lift car diagonally including the ceiling height, because a 3m slab only goes in a small lift if it can be stood on edge and tilted, and many of these cars have low soffits. Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop installation, 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered. Get the porter's lift dimensions and permitted hours in writing before you order, because a block that only allows deliveries 10am to 4pm turns a one-day install into two.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Nothing bears on plasterboard. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Chimney breasts are often taken out at ground level and left standing above, so the middle of the run is newer wall than the two ends of it. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Suction pads will not hold on a wet or dusty face.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.