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. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. It is one line among the others, and it is honest.

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. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

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 car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop design & quotation, in that order. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. Comparing quotes only works when they itemise the same things, and this is where the differences usually hide. Itemised, so it can be compared honestly. 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.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. 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. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Written to be read by whoever is paying. 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.