Kitchen worktops in King's Cross

Yes. Predominantly recent apartments with the kitchen built into the living space, so a 3-3.6m run plus an island or peninsula with an integrated hob and a designed-in overhang for stools. The converted industrial buildings have bigger floorplates and take longer single runs without a join. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. You are told before you commit to a date.

new-build apartment, converted railway and industrial building, Victorian terrace and ex-local-authority block. An infill house is built to modern standards on an old plot, so the room is square even though the site around it is not. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. That is the shape of the day.

Estate management with booked loading bays, service lifts and delivery windows, which is straightforward if you book it and impossible if you do not. The surrounding roads including Euston Road and Pentonville Road are red routes with no stopping. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop design & quotation, in that order. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Nothing payable until we template. New-build units are square and level, so the job is logistics and protecting finished floors rather than scribing, and the real risk is damaging a communal lobby rather than mis-cutting a top.

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 nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Every join sits over a gable. 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. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The drawing decides it, not the fitter. 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 quote is written so it can be read by whoever is paying rather than only by whoever is standing in the kitchen. Nothing payable until template. 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.