Kitchen worktops in Swiss Cottage

Yes. Dominated by purpose-built flats, so kitchens are self-contained rooms of 2.5-3.5m with services fixed on one wall and no scope to move the stack. Layouts are almost always galley or single-wall with a short return, and open plan only appears in the newer blocks. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

1930s mansion block, post-war block, Victorian villa conversion and modern apartment. The original kitchen was a small service room, so what is there now is a knock-through and the junction between the two floors is rarely level. This is the most managed day we do. That is the shape of the day.

Finchley Road is a red route with no stopping, so loading happens on the side streets under a Monday to Friday CPZ. Most blocks have a lift, but the older 1930s cars are small and shallow and a 3m slab will not stand up inside one. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Interwar block kitchens sit on a solid concrete floor with a boxed-in soil stack in the corner, so allow for a notch and a scribe rather than assuming a clean 90-degree return.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Height change is checked before we cut. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The laminate has been covering it up. 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. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. 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.