Kitchen worktops in Belsize Park

Yes. Mostly big villas cut into flats, so the kitchen is often a converted reception or a rear half-landing room with a high ceiling and only one genuinely usable wall. Garden flats take a proper 3.5m run plus a peninsula onto the rear, but plenty of the upper flats are five-sided rooms created by conversion partitions with no square corner to work from. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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.

Italianate stucco villa, large conversion flat, red-brick mansion block and post-war infill. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

CPZ enforced Monday to Friday with permit-only bays on the hill streets, and residents' parking around Haverstock Hill is effectively full all day. Communal front doors, no lifts in the villa conversions, and half-landing turns on the original staircases mean the tightest measurement is usually the return on the first-floor stair. 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. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

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. 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. Conversion partitions are stud rather than brick, so check the fixing before cantilevering a peninsula off one, and expect the ceiling drops to force a lower splashback height than the client asked for.

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. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. The drawing leaves site complete. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. 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.

Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. 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.