Kitchen worktops in Bank

Yes. Conversions of former banking and office buildings give unusual room shapes with very tall ceilings and thick masonry, so kitchens are often an L of 3-3.5m tucked into a corner of a large single room, with the stone chosen to sit against ornate original plasterwork. Pied-a-terre flats here are used lightly, so the brief is durability and low maintenance rather than a big cooking layout. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Where a bay suspension or a permit is needed, that is a real cost and it goes on the quote instead of appearing later. You are told before you commit to a date.

banking hall and office building converted to flats, Victorian commercial building with residential upper floors, modern apartment in a mixed-use scheme and small pied-a-terre flat. Piece size is set by the lift car and the entrance dogleg, which routinely turns a two-piece kitchen into a three-piece one. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. That is the shape of the day.

The Bank junction itself is restricted to buses and cycles during weekday daytime hours, which is the single most important planning fact for a delivery here - the approach has to be worked out from the permitted streets, not the shortest route. Add security desks, ANPR on the City's entry points and short loading windows, and an early or late slot is usually the only practical option. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, in that order. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. That changes what the quote should be compared against, because the shape of the job is not the same as a single family kitchen. Material is the slab only, and it says so. Plan the delivery route around the Bank junction restrictions first and the kitchen second, because a wrong turn here is a fine and a missed slot.

Where the return runs into a wall that is out of square, the corner is templated as the angle it really is rather than as ninety degrees. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Dry-lay first, always. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Better on the quote than in a variation. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Nothing is payable until we template, so a quote can sit while consents and decisions catch up. Written to be read by whoever is paying. 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.