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. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. The templating visit needs somewhere to stop for two or three hours, which is a different problem from unloading for twenty minutes. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

Georgian terrace on the surviving quiet streets, 1980s-90s apartment block, office conversion flat and modern hotel and residential mixed-use. Service risers from the original building run through the flats. They are boxed, they stay, and they have to remain accessible. The room itself is the easy part: walls are plumb, corners are square and the floor is flat, so scribes are minimal and joins can be tight. What is under the old top is the real question.

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. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. The strip-out is planned around it.

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

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. 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 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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.