Kitchen worktops in Richmond

Yes. Around the Green and the town it is mostly flats and maisonettes - Georgian upper floors with kitchens squeezed into former dressing rooms, and mansion blocks with narrow galleys of 2.4m to 3m where a slimline 20mm top is chosen to keep the run feeling wider. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Georgian terrace, Victorian terrace, Edwardian mansion block and 1990s riverside apartments. A villa cut into flats leaves kitchens in rooms that were never kitchens, with services run to wherever they could physically be made to reach. 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. That is the shape of the day.

Conservation-area frontages with railings and steps, a strict CPZ with short-stay bays only, and a town centre that clogs at weekends; several riverside blocks flood-plan their basements, so lift access is from an upper lobby. 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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. A licensed shared house has fire-door and escape-route rules that decide how and when stone can be carried through the common parts. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead. Georgian upper-floor flats have springy timber floors, so the units need levelling and packing before the top goes on or the joint opens within a month.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. Plotted, not estimated. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed. 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.