Kitchen worktops in Tower Hill

Yes. The surviving Georgian houses on the quieter streets are narrow and listed in places, with kitchens at ground or basement of 2.4-3m, sloping floors and no straight walls to work to. Apartment blocks nearby are late twentieth century with conventional galley kitchens of 2.8-3.2m and a peninsula, where the job is usually replacing dated granite with a lighter engineered stone. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. It goes on the job sheet for the fitting crew.

Georgian terrace on the surviving quiet streets, 1980s-90s apartment block, office conversion flat and modern hotel and residential mixed-use. The structure is a concrete or steel frame, so what looks like a wall is often a partition and what looks like a partition is often a column. Housings set out for a 38mm laminate change clearance when you drop to 20mm or 30mm stone, and that is checked before cutting. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Tourist footfall around the Tower is constant and the surrounding roads carry heavy through traffic with no stopping, so loading has to be on the back streets in an off-peak window. Georgian properties have narrow original doors and steep straight stairs with a tight half-landing, and the listing means no removal of joinery to get a piece through. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Sealed before we leave. Nothing in the Georgian stock is square or level, so template with a digital arm and expect to scribe every back edge rather than cutting to a drawing.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Height change is checked before we cut. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. 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.