Kitchen worktops in Notting Hill

Yes. The Ladbroke Estate houses put the kitchen on the lower ground floor at the back, usually knocked through into a rear extension that runs out under the communal garden wall, so you get a 3.2-4m wall run plus an island of 2.4m or more. Mews conversions behind the main terraces are the opposite job entirely: a single galley run of 2.6-3.2m against one wall with a hob undercut and no room for a return. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The van is packed to suit the walk at the other end.

1840s-1860s stucco-fronted townhouse, communal garden square terrace, Victorian coach-house mews and Edwardian mansion flat. Where a side return has been infilled, the join between old brick and new blockwork lands mid-run and the two faces are never in one plane. The galley run down a side-return usually measures longer than a slab will give us, so a join is designed in from the start and nested to land over a cabinet gable rather than wherever the material happens to run out. The template carries the building into the workshop.

Almost the whole area is conservation area with single yellow and RBKC residents' bays, so a slab van gets a loading window rather than a parking space. Most houses are entered either up a raised front step or down external area steps into the lightwell, and that bottom landing is where slabs get stuck - it is often under 900mm deep with a right-angle turn straight into the kitchen door. The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. Measure the turn at the foot of the area steps before you cut anything, because a 3m piece that clears the stair will still refuse the 90-degree swing at the bottom.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. The overhang is cut with its support already sized. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The whole slot, or the stone waits. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Eased in, never forced.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. 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. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Edge work on a return matches edge work on a length.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. An inward-opening door swinging back against the wall leaves less clear opening than the frame measures, and a storm porch in front of it is tighter again. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. A semi has a side passage, and whether it is wide enough to carry a piece flat and turn it in at the back door is the first thing worth measuring. The other constraint is the hall: a piece has to come through the front door, round the newel at the foot of the stairs and through a doorway into the back kitchen, so we size the pieces to the tightest turn on that route before we nest anything, which sometimes means splitting a run that would otherwise have gone in whole. A wall that leans is machined to the lean.