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. 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. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

Edwardian red-brick mansion block, Victorian villa and 1930s purpose-built flat. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. A mansion block is a logistics job before it is a stone job. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

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. 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. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One visit, done properly. Original mansion-block lifts take a person and a toolbox, not a slab - assume everything goes up the stairs and price the labour accordingly.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. One datum for the whole room. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. 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.