Kitchen worktops in Little Venice

Yes. Regency villas around the canal have been split into large flats with high-ceilinged kitchens, usually a 3.5m run with a slim island and a lot of glass onto the garden square. There is also a small but real market in narrowboat galleys, where the top is under 500mm deep and cut to a curve. 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. Pieces are loaded in reverse fitting order so the first thing off the van is the first thing that goes down. That is the last thing settled before dispatch.

Regency stucco villa, Victorian terrace conversion, 1930s mansion block and houseboat. The stair to the lower ground floor has a turn at the bottom and a low soffit above it, and both are measured before anything is nested. Islands here regularly run longer than a slab, so the join is nested to sit over an internal gable and positioned so it does not run through the hob cut-out, and on a heavily veined stone we nest the island and the back run together so the movement relates across the room. The bench proves it before the van moves.

Canal-side streets are narrow with permit bays and bridge weight and width limits at Warwick Avenue, and several buildings back onto the towpath with no vehicle access at all. Stucco villas have a raised front entrance with six or seven stone steps. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. The maximum piece length is fixed at drawing stage and every join is placed over a cabinet gable from there. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The prep list is not optional. Boat galleys need thin, light material and radiused edges cut to a hull curve - it is a template-and-fabricate job, nothing about it is standard kitchen dimensions.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. A join that lands in the wrong place cannot be moved once the cut-outs are machined, so it is settled on the drawing. Every join sits over a gable. 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 laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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. 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.