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. 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. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation.

new-build apartment, converted railway and industrial building, Victorian terrace and ex-local-authority block. Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. 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. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

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. A lift out of service for the day turns a straightforward install into a stair carry, so the slot gets confirmed with whoever manages the building rather than against a calendar. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The maximum piece is written on the drawing in millimetres.

Worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. The batch is checked against itself before it leaves. 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.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radius first, polish second, joins nowhere near. 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.

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 workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. One approval, one cut, one delivery. 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.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. A notch and a cut-out never share the same span.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. 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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Block and beam floors with blockwork walls are true enough that the scribes are light and the joins can be pulled tight. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Car depth is the number that settles it wherever a piece cannot be stood upright, and most residential cars are shallower than the run they are serving. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Nesting follows the route, not the other way round.