Kitchen worktops in Highbury

Yes. Long late-Victorian terraces largely split into upper and lower flats, so the kitchen sits in the back addition on whichever level you are on, usually an L of 3-3.5m. Where houses are whole, the standard job is a side-return infill that turns the back addition into a wide kitchen-diner with a peninsula. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

late Victorian terrace, Georgian terrace, Edwardian mansion block and conversion flat. The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

The streets around Highbury Fields are permit-only and narrow with parking both sides, and filtered-street schemes block several of the obvious approaches. Upper-flat kitchens mean a shared front door and a steep single flight with a turn at the top. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.

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. Two to three hours on site, with the sink, tap and hob physically present. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. Side-return infills leave you scribing against a hundred-year-old party wall on one side and fresh plaster on the other, so template after plastering rather than before.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. 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 run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the laser plots the intermediate points. One measurement never describes it, which is why a tape reading taken before the visit rarely matches the template. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. 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. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.