Kitchen worktops in Telegraph Hill

Yes. Tall Victorian villas on a steep hill, most converted into flats. Garden-level flats have kitchens in the old lower ground with low ceilings and a lightwell, and the upper flats have kitchens in the return with a window at one end and no straight run beyond 3m. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

1870s-1890s Victorian villa, Victorian terrace and conservation-area flat conversion. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Some of the steepest streets in the borough, with houses set high above the pavement behind long flights of steps and railings; conservation-area frontages mean no dropped kerbs and permit-only parking. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement, 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Proven on the bench before dispatch. A dozen steps up from the pavement then a stair inside is the normal profile here, anything over 2.5m needs three people or a joint.

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. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. Real angles, not plan angles. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate has been covering it up. 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.

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. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. Dry-assembled before it leaves. 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.