Kitchen worktops in South Hampstead

Yes. Large villas divided into two or three flats, which leaves kitchens in odd positions such as a converted bedroom, a rear return or an extended half-landing, and rarely gives you two long parallel walls. Runs sit at 2.4-3m with a lot of fitted corner work around bay windows and blocked fireplace openings. Camera enforcement gives nobody the chance to explain, where an officer on foot at least sees a tail lift down and stone coming off it. 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. Access out counts as much as access in.

Victorian villa conversion, red-brick mansion block and Edwardian terrace. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. These are the multi-piece jobs: long runs, a large island and often a range cooker that cannot be moved, so the stone is templated in several pieces and how the vein runs across the joins matters. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Permit bays fill early and many villas sit back behind long front paths, so the carry is 15-25 metres before you even reach the door. No lifts in the conversions, and the original staircases are generous in width but have winders at the turn. A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. That family has lived on a building site long enough. Winder stairs are worse than narrow ones for slab work because the effective diagonal shrinks at the turn, so size pieces off the tightest tread rather than the landing.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Level the units first, measure the shape second. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The units stay, the surface changes.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. Any island overhang past about 300mm will not carry weight on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or brackets have to be let into the units first, and that is agreed at template stage, not on fit day. What is under the old top is the real question.

The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Big rooms hide their falls, and the difference from one corner of a five metre floor to the other is measured in tens of millimetres. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A single day, planned properly.