Kitchen worktops in Marylebone

Yes. Mansion flats dominate, and the classic job is a tired 1980s kitchen in a large flat being replaced with a handleless design in the same footprint - a 3.5m run along the old service wall plus a short island where the maid's room used to be. Estate leases mean layout changes need landlord approval, so the layout usually stays. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The day is built around that window.

Georgian estate townhouse, Edwardian mansion block and medical-building conversion. Sash windows sit in deep reveals with a working box behind the lining, so a run dying into one has to clear more than the plaster. This is the most managed day we do. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

Portered mansion blocks with a set of house rules - works hours typically 9 to 5 weekdays only, no weekends, lift protection mandatory, and the porter controls when you can bring materials through the front hall. Original lift cars will not take a full slab. 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. Old pieces are carried out before new ones are carried in.

Worktop replacement 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The annexe top goes in on the same day. Estate leases restrict altering the layout, so you are usually working to exactly the same run positions as the old top - keep the old worktop as a reference until the new one is in.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

Work between tenancies runs against a fixed date rather than a preference, and stone has a lead time that has to fit inside that window with a few days spare. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Repeat flats take the same replacement specification. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. These kitchens were service rooms once, so they are long, narrow and further from the entrance than the floor plan suggests. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The route is walked before the first lift.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Same footprint, different tolerances.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. 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. Half a day can go on the strip-out where the way in is tight.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. The finish time is set by the block rather than by the work, so the sequence is planned to end early rather than to run late. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.