Kitchen worktops in Bermondsey

Yes. Two very different jobs sit side by side here: bay-front terraces off Southwark Park Road where the kitchen has been pushed into a side-return extension with a 3.5m run under a rooflight, and Bermondsey Street warehouse flats where the kitchen is a single long galley run against a load-bearing brick flank wall with an island floated in the open-plan middle. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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.

Victorian terrace, Victorian warehouse conversion, 1930s LCC estate block and 2010s infill flats. Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. In most Victorian terraces the kitchen sits in the back addition, so you get a narrow galley with one outside wall and nothing square to work off. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Jamaica Road and Tower Bridge Road are red routes with no stopping, so slabs come off on the side streets under a CPZ suspension; warehouse conversions usually mean a single narrow original stair with a half-landing turn, not a lift. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. 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. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. 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. In the warehouse flats nothing is square or plumb - the brickwork bellies, so every back edge gets scribed rather than trusted to the tape.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. 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.