Kitchen worktops in West Kensington

Yes. The mansion blocks on the avenues off North End Road have deep plans with the kitchen at the back off a long internal corridor, taking 2.6-3.2m of run and a separate larder cupboard that often becomes a fridge housing. Corridor width is the defining feature - many are only 900-1000mm with a right-angle at the kitchen door, so nothing over about 2.6m gets round without going on edge and tilted. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. 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. The day is built around that window.

red-brick mansion block, Victorian terrace subdivided into flats, postwar estate block and flat over North End Road shop. External walls are thick and the run under the window sits in a deep reveal that has to be templated rather than assumed square. Mansion-block kitchens usually have a serviced riser or boxed pipework somewhere in the run, and the boxing is rarely the same depth from one end to the other, so the template takes the depth at worktop height at several points rather than one reading. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Mansion blocks here mostly have no lift or a small original one, communal stone stairs with iron balustrades, and a caretaker rather than a full-time porter, so access is arranged flat by flat. North End Road has a street market on trading days that removes kerbside access entirely, so pick a non-market day for delivery if you can. 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. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating 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 units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. The internal corridor turn beats the front door every time in these blocks - template the corridor, then design the joints.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Units kept, surface changed. 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.