Kitchen worktops in Spitalfields

Yes. In the Georgian houses the kitchen is usually in the basement or rear ground floor, fitted between panelled walls with a run of 2.4m to 3m and no space for an island. Owners often want a low-profile, quiet installation that does not fight the period joinery, so slim edge profiles and undermounted sinks are the norm. 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. Tell us at enquiry stage and it is priced properly, because a crew stood waiting is the most expensive thing on any job. You are told before you commit to a date.

early Georgian silk weavers' house, Victorian warehouse conversion and 1970s-80s infill flat. Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. The second thing is the carry route: front door, narrow hall, a turn at the stairs and often a step down into the extension, which can mean a piece that would template in one length has to be split to physically get into the room. That is what the itemised lines are for.

Most of the area is a conservation area with a high concentration of listed houses, so any fixings into original fabric and any external hoisting need consent and a careful method. Streets are narrow, largely pedestrianised near the market and loading windows are early morning only, with staircases inside the houses that are steep, winding and original. Where nothing will go up the stairs or into the lift, the only route left is through an opening, and that is a lifting operation rather than a carry. An access-driven join is priced like any other join, and people are always surprised to see one on a dead straight run. Nothing about it gets estimated after the fact.

Worktop templating, worktop fabrication and worktop design & quotation, 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. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. You cannot cut a listed house to suit the stone, so the stone gets templated and jointed to suit the house, including a joint mid-run just to get it down the stairs.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Join positions and vein direction are marked on the template drawing before it leaves site. The drawing leaves site complete. 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. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. The approved drawing is the instruction. 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.