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. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

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. Every flat on the floor is the same plan handed left and right, so the room is predictable even where the building is not. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

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. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. Cutting a top down indoors means emptying the room first.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Same day, because the void is the whole budget. 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.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. 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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate was scribed thin. Stone cannot be. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. A tired carcass is said before, not discovered after. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The kitchen is usually part of the living space, so three edges are read from a sofa rather than from standing height at the sink. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat.

Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. What is behind the old top decides the day.