Kitchen worktops in Ladbroke Grove

Yes. The road splits at the Westway: south of it you are working in whole-house stucco with lower ground kitchens, north of it the same terraces are cut into two and three flats and the kitchen is a converted back bedroom or a corner of a through-lounge. Conversion flats take an L-shape of roughly 2.4m by 1.6m with a peninsula, and the chimney breast is almost always still in place dictating where the joint falls. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The day is built around that window.

Victorian terrace converted to flats, 1960s-70s local authority block, stucco terrace south of the Westway and warehouse and studio conversion. The flat entrance door and the internal doorways are usually tighter than the communal stairs, which is the opposite of what most people assume. Victorian party walls and chimney-breast returns bow along their length, so the template plots the real line rather than assuming a straight one - the template picks up points every few hundred millimetres down the back of the run and the drawing carries that curve through to the saw. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

Ladbroke Grove itself is a red route in stretches with a bus lane, so unloading happens on the side streets and the walk-in is longer than the drive. Upper-floor conversion flats have no lift and a communal stair with a tight quarter turn at each half-landing, which is the real limit on piece size here rather than the door width. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop installation, in that order. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. Plan a joint you can live with rather than fight the communal stair - a well-placed mitre behind the hob beats a heroic single piece that scrapes the landing plaster.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. 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 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.