Kitchen worktops in Swiss Cottage

Yes. Dominated by purpose-built flats, so kitchens are self-contained rooms of 2.5-3.5m with services fixed on one wall and no scope to move the stack. Layouts are almost always galley or single-wall with a short return, and open plan only appears in the newer blocks. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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.

1930s mansion block, post-war block, Victorian villa conversion and modern apartment. Balcony access and long communal corridors are often the carry route, and both are narrower than they look with a piece on edge. The porter has to be booked, the goods lift protected with the block's own blankets or our own boards, and communal carpet and stair runners covered from the entrance to the flat door before a single piece moves. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Finchley Road is a red route with no stopping, so loading happens on the side streets under a Monday to Friday CPZ. Most blocks have a lift, but the older 1930s cars are small and shallow and a 3m slab will not stand up inside one. 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. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One visit, done properly. Interwar block kitchens sit on a solid concrete floor with a boxed-in soil stack in the corner, so allow for a notch and a scribe rather than assuming a clean 90-degree return.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. 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.