Kitchen worktops in West Hampstead

Yes. Heavy conversion-flat territory, with purpose-built Edwardian mansion flats where the kitchen sits fixed off the hall, plus terraced houses split into upper and lower flats. The recurring job is replacing a tired laminate galley run of 2.6-3.2m and adding upstands, rather than reconfiguring the room. 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. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Victorian terrace, Edwardian mansion block, conversion flat and modern development. Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. 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. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

West End Lane is congested with buses and has almost no loading, so you work off the residential side streets under a Monday to Friday CPZ. Mansion blocks are commonly three or four storeys with no lift and a communal stair shared with other residents, which has to be cleared before any carrying starts. 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. A template taken without walking the route produces a drawing that cuts beautifully and will not go in. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop templating, 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. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. Replacement work here means templating over existing units, so check for out-of-level base cabinets before cutting, because decades of settlement in these blocks show up as a 10mm fall across a 3m run.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. 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.

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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. 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.