Kitchen worktops in Battersea Park

Yes. Mansion flats facing the park have kitchens carved from original service rooms — deep but narrow, with a run down one wall and a tall larder unit where the old scullery door was. Owners commonly open the kitchen to a reception room, which puts a peninsula in the structural opening. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

Edwardian mansion block, Victorian villa and Interwar purpose-built flat. Permitted works hours are commonly weekdays with a late start and an early finish, so a one-day fit is planned around the porter and the lift. Anything that has to stay accessible - stopcocks, gas meters, riser access panels - is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Mansion blocks have wide communal stairs but many have no lift or only a small original passenger lift, and porters restrict working hours. Flat entrance doors are often original and narrower than the corridor suggests. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. Door widths, turn diagonals and any change of level are recorded on the drawing alongside the run dimensions. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The prep list is not optional. Peninsulas set into a structural opening need the finished opening measured after the steel is cased, because the casing adds 40 to 60mm each side that the architect's drawing ignores.

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. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. The drawing leaves site complete. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. That is why the visit takes two or three hours. 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. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. 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.