Kitchen worktops in St James's

Yes. Very little conventional family housing - most stone work here is in apartments over commercial floors, chambers-style flats, and back-of-house kitchens and pantries in club and office buildings. Layouts are plain single runs and service counters rather than designed kitchens, but the finishes have to match a period interior. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. It rarely changes what we cut, but it does change how the pieces are stacked and strapped for the run out. The load plan follows from it.

Georgian townhouse, club and chambers building and period apartment above commercial. Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. 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.

Security zones around Whitehall and the royal parks bring road closures and vehicle checks, and ceremonial events shut the area at short notice. Buildings are listed with managed access, and deliveries generally go through a rear service entrance with a signed-in trolley route. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop templating, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The prep list is not optional. Most of this is commercial-adjacent work, so surfaces need to take heat and heavy use in a small area - a hard sintered surface beats a resin quartz next to a commercial hob.

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. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every join sits over a gable. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.