Kitchen worktops in Olympia

Yes. The streets around the exhibition halls mix family terraces with lower-ground kitchens and a scatter of former studio houses that have double-height rooms and unusually tall kitchen walls, where clients often want full-height stone rather than an upstand. Terrace kitchens run 3-3.6m with a modest island, and the studio properties throw up one long uninterrupted wall that suits a single-piece splashback. Where an event closes the road entirely, the van cannot be moved once it is in, which is a different problem from not being able to park at all. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

Victorian terrace, mansion flat, artists' studio house and mixed-use block near the exhibition centre. Rooms are tall with deep window reveals, and a run finishing into a reveal is templated to it rather than assumed square. Pieces are sized to the tightest turn on the route before anything is nested to the slab. The bench proves it before the van moves.

Event days at the exhibition centre bring road closures, traffic management and full parking suspensions on the surrounding streets, so check the event calendar before booking a fit. Otherwise the streets are ordinary CPZ terraces with front paths and steps, and the usual hallway-and-newel problem. 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. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

Worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. Check whether there is a show on before you book the day, because an exhibition closure can put you 400m from the front door with a full A-frame.

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 same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Changes cost a piece, not a tweak. 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.