Kitchen worktops in Bankside

Yes. High-spec apartment kitchens, usually a German handleless system with a full-height tall bank, a long island with mitred waterfall ends, and a preference for large-format porcelain or Dekton at 12mm to 20mm rather than heavy stone. 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. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1990s riverside apartment, 2000s glass tower and converted industrial building. A riverside block is a managed building with a booked goods lift, a loading bay and a concierge, and all three have to line up on the same day. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Riverside towers with a single loading bay, booked service lift, protective floor coverings demanded by building management, and no kerbside anywhere near the entrance. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, in that order. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. 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. Waterfall ends and mitred edges mean the fabrication tolerances matter more than the fitting - a 1mm out on the mitre shows on a 900mm drop.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. It is the shape rather than the square metreage that moves the number, which is why two kitchens the same size quote differently. Shape first, area second. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. 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. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. 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.