Kitchen worktops in Maida Vale

Yes. Mansion-block flats with kitchens at the back of the plan, originally a scullery and larder now combined into one room of roughly 3m by 2.5m. The typical brief is a full refit in the same footprint with a long run under the window and a tall bank opposite - islands do not fit in this plan form. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. Two hours is the realistic figure.

Edwardian red-brick mansion block, Victorian villa and 1930s purpose-built flat. Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. A full stone piece is several times the weight of the laminate coming out, and there is rarely room to turn it on a half-landing. What is under the old top is the real question.

The blocks are portered and run formal house rules - weekday works hours only, no noisy work before 9am or after 5pm, mandatory lift and floor protection, and often a rear service entrance you must use instead of the main hall. The original passenger lifts are small cars with folding gates. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating 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. Sealed before we leave. Original mansion-block lifts take a person and a toolbox, not a slab - assume everything goes up the stairs and price the labour accordingly.

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. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. Real angles, not plan angles. Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Eased in, never forced. 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. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. Protection goes down first. 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.