Kitchen worktops in Lisson Grove

Yes. High-density estate housing with standardised kitchens - a 2.4m run against a concrete wall, a return under the window, and a boxed-in service riser in one corner that cannot move. Replacement work is usually one flat at a time within an occupied block. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Half a day of parking buys half a job.

post-war council tower, 1960s slab block and Victorian terrace. The hot water cylinder sits in a cupboard opening off the kitchen or the landing above it, and the pipework to it drops through the corner of the room. The carry is the constraint. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Towers with a single residents' lift, controlled entry, and long internal corridors from the lift to the flat door. Estate roads have resident-only bays with active enforcement, and the Marylebone Road end has no stopping at all. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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 carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Specified for wear rather than for the photograph. Concrete walls mean no chasing and no easy fixing - upstands get bonded rather than screwed, and any island needs a floor-fixed frame because you will not get a decent fixing into the wall.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. Long walls break where the worktop breaks. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. A tall panel that fits at the worktop will stand off the wall at the top unless the wall is dubbed out or the panel is scribed. A tall panel exposes what an upstand forgives. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

A leaseholder paying for their own kitchen inside managed stock still needs the freeholder to consent, and that consent is about the building and the common parts rather than about the worktop. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The gap between tenancies is the whole window. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The carry is the constraint: a single stair with tight half-landings, or deck access with a long walk from the lift. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The room is swept and the offcuts leave with us.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. Windows sit high and the sill line crosses the middle of the run, which limits what can go above the worktop. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Packers under the carcass, not shims under the stone.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. 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. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Upstands follow the return round the corner.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The crew size follows from it.