Kitchen worktops in Monument

Yes. The flats here are small city apartments in converted upper floors, and kitchens are typically an L of 2.4-3m with a compact appliance run, often opening straight into the living space. Because the buildings are narrow and deep, the kitchen usually has no window and sits against an internal wall, so a stone splashback and a matching windowsill-height upstand is the standard finish. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

upper-floor flat in a Victorian commercial building, modern apartment over retail, narrow lane building conversion and postwar block with residential floors. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. The lift car is usually too short and too low to take a full-length piece flat or on edge, so stone either goes up the communal stairs with their half-landings and winders, or the run is designed with joins that suit the staircase rather than the kitchen. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

The lanes running down toward the river between Eastcheap and Lower Thames Street are narrow, one-way and steeply graded in places, and several are pedestrian-only during the working day. Building entrances are often a single street door with a straight stair to the upper floors, no lift, and no room at all to set a slab down while you rest. 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. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The template visit is booked once the units are genuinely in, not when they are nearly in. The room as it is, not as it was drawn. The gradient on the lanes down to the river means a loaded trolley will run away from you - chock it or carry it, do not push it downhill.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. The joint to the worktop is siliconed, never grouted. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. We would rather find it at template than on the morning, which is why the templater looks behind the units. It is the usual surprise, and it is a known one. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The template happens when the units are in, fixed and level, whoever is fitting them. Appliances on site, not on order. 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.