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. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it.

Regency stucco villa, Victorian terrace conversion, 1930s mansion block and houseboat. Rooms are formally proportioned with deep reveals and shutter boxes, so runs under windows are templated to what is actually there. 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. Settled on the drawing, cut once.

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. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. 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 templating, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. 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.

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. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Plotted, not estimated. 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.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. 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.