Kitchen worktops in Knightsbridge

Yes. Prime apartment stock with a main kitchen for show and a separate staff or prep kitchen behind it, both needing stone. The show kitchen is handleless with a large island and often a full-height stone splashback; the prep kitchen is a plain 3m run in the same material to keep continuity. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. Nothing here is added after the fact.

red-brick mansion block, prime new-build apartment and Victorian townhouse. These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. The lift, if there is one, is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a tight turn at every half-landing - so pieces get cut deliberately shorter than the slab allows and the kitchen is designed with more joins than it strictly needs. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out.

Buildings run 24-hour security and a strict delivery protocol - vehicle booked in, ID for every fitter, protection down through the lobby and lift, and noisy works restricted to a defined window. Some buildings insist all cutting happens off site with zero exceptions. 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. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Worktop design & quotation, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. Nothing gets cut on site in these buildings, so the template must be dimensionally exact including appliance clearances - one wrong cut-out means a full replacement slab, not a rework.

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. 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. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.