Kitchen worktops in Chalk Farm

Yes. Smaller Victorian terraces and mews cottages, so kitchens are compact and often on the ground floor of a two-storey mews with the living space above, which means 2.5-3m of run, sink under a rear window and no island. A handful of former industrial buildings near the railway have been converted and those get the only long open-plan runs in the area. 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. 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.

Victorian terrace, mews cottage, ex-local-authority block and warehouse conversion. Mews are cobbled and tight, so a long-wheelbase van may not get down at all and the carry starts at the entrance to the mews. One datum for the whole room, because a floor that falls end to end shows as a step between island and perimeter. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Streets around the railway bridges are narrow with sharp corners and the CPZ leaves almost no loading space, while Chalk Farm Road itself is bus lanes and market overspill. Mews cottages have a single narrow door straight off the cobbles and an immediate turn into the kitchen. A narrow entrance hall with a turn into the back of the house caps the longest piece we can physically get in, whatever the run itself measures. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. In a mews cottage the door width and the 90-degree turn just beyond it decide every piece size, so walk the swept path with a board before committing to a one-piece top.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Plumber either side of us. 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.