Kitchen worktops in St John's Wood

Yes. Detached and semi-detached villas with large rear kitchens - a 4m run, a 3m island, a separate utility and often a prep sink, all designed by a studio. The portered blocks nearby are the opposite: a self-contained kitchen room with a fixed layout and a landlord consent process before anything moves. Streets near a ground or a venue have restrictions that come and go with the fixture list rather than with the time of day. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

Regency villa, Victorian semi-detached villa, 1930s mansion block and 1960s portered block. The stair to the lower ground floor has a turn at the bottom and a low soffit above it, and both are measured before anything is nested. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. The shell has the last word on fitting day.

Leasehold and estate consents govern the villas, and the blocks impose porter-controlled access, weekday-only works hours and lift protection. Match and event days at Lord's suspend bays and gridlock the roads around the ground, which needs checking when booking a fitting date. Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Nothing leaves the bench longer than the way in allows.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Yield is what makes batching worth doing at all. Big islands in the villas usually exceed what four men can carry through the house - check whether the garden doors are still off, because going in through the rear is far easier than round the stair.

An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The join is the last thing finished. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The mitre is cut to the angle we found, not to ninety. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

The person choosing the surface is not the person who will cook on it, which argues for a finish that absorbs ordinary wear rather than one that rewards careful housekeeping. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A landlord repeating a kitchen gets the same detail cut. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The room has three or four doors and a route through it to the garden, so the work shares the space with everyone else in the house. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The whole run is dry-fitted before any adhesive is opened.

Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Rooms are formally proportioned with deep reveals and shutter boxes, so runs under windows are templated to what is actually there. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. A remake is the price of guessing that measurement.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Support first, stone second.