Kitchen worktops in Pentonville

Yes. Steeply sloping Georgian and early Victorian terraces mostly in flats, so kitchens are compact rooms carved out of larger ones at 2.4-3m, with high ceilings and shallow chimney recesses either side of the breast. The estate flats nearby are standard galleys with no scope to move anything. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Georgian terrace, early Victorian terrace, post-war estate block and converted institutional building. Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Pentonville Road is a red route sitting on the Congestion Charge boundary with almost no stopping on the hill, and the side streets are permit-only and one-way. Front doors step with the gradient, so every house on a terrace is a different height off the pavement. 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. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Chimney recesses give you a 300-400mm deeper pocket in an otherwise standard run, which is worth using for a wider top rather than boxing out to a false wall.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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 a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. The templater needs the sink, tap and hob on site, and a Belfast sink installed at its final height. Fitted, fixed and level, then we come. 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.