Kitchen worktops in Little Venice

Yes. Regency villas around the canal have been split into large flats with high-ceilinged kitchens, usually a 3.5m run with a slim island and a lot of glass onto the garden square. There is also a small but real market in narrowboat galleys, where the top is under 500mm deep and cut to a curve. 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. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. Kerbside unloading is planned in the racking, not improvised at the door.

Regency stucco villa, Victorian terrace conversion, 1930s mansion block and houseboat. The plan runs front to back with a spine wall between, so the kitchen is two rooms of work rather than one open space. Access is off a drive and through wide doors, so for once the piece size is not the constraint - the joins that go in are the ones we choose for layout and veining, not the ones the building forces. Thin partitions get shallower overhangs, decided in the shop.

Canal-side streets are narrow with permit bays and bridge weight and width limits at Warwick Avenue, and several buildings back onto the towpath with no vehicle access at all. Stucco villas have a raised front entrance with six or seven stone steps. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. Boat galleys need thin, light material and radiused edges cut to a hull curve - it is a template-and-fabricate job, nothing about it is standard kitchen dimensions.

An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. A recut loses the sequence for good. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A forced back edge cracks weeks later. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. Pieces are dry-assembled on the bench before dispatch so the corners are known to close before they leave the workshop. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. Every piece is drawn onto the slab before anything is cut, so the veining and the join positions are decided together rather than one after the other. Short pieces cost bench time, not slab area.

Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Wide doors, generous rooms and somewhere to park mean the joins that go in are the ones we choose, not the ones the building forces. The workshop works to the template drawing and to the measured route, in that order. Book-matching is decided at the slab, not at the saw.