Worktop replacement in Barbican

Yes. Barbican is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2Y. It is run from the Essex side, covering Essex & East London. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Base units from the seventies and eighties are often only 500mm deep, so a 600mm stone top overhangs at the front and the doors want checking against it. Post-war terraces have small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run, so runs are short and joins are rare, but there are usually two corners and a window cill to work around in a couple of metres. Sound carcasses are the one condition. Do a full dry run of the route from car park lift to flat door before ordering, because the Barbican's walk-in is longer and more awkward than any staircase in the City.

There is no vehicle access to the podium at all - you park in one of the estate car parks below, then use a car park lift and walk the highwalks and internal corridors, which can be several hundred metres with multiple fire doors and level changes. Lift cars in the residential cores are small with low ceilings, so anything over about 2.2m has to be assessed against the specific core before you cut. 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. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. It sets what the day actually looks like. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Old tops out in the morning, new stone down and sealed the same afternoon. A plumber either side of us. 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. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. Sound carcasses or it does not go ahead.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The units stay, the surface changes. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. Empty the base units completely and have a plumber disconnect the sink, tap and any washing machine plumbed in under the worktop before we arrive. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. Plumber either side of us.