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. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. Where unloading has to happen in one go, the load order is planned so nothing has to come off twice. It is decided in the yard, not at the kerb.

Georgian townhouse, club and chambers building and period apartment above commercial. Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. The day is planned backwards from the hall. That is the shape of the day.

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. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop templating, 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. 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.

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. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. That is nested before any glass goes on the saw. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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 ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first. 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.