Kitchen worktops in Blackfriars

Yes. Riverside flats put the living space against the glazing and the kitchen against the core, so the run is 3-3.5m with a peninsula facing the river and one polished exposed end on show. Older commercial conversions here have thick masonry cross-walls, meaning the kitchen sits in a defined bay and long single pieces are actually easier than in a modern open plan. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. A timed bay does not cover a strip-out and a fit.

riverside apartment block, 1990s-2000s conversion of commercial building, modern mixed-use tower and small period flat above offices. A balcony door is the only other opening in the flat and it leads nowhere useful, so everything comes in through the front door. Piece size is set by the lift car, not by the slab. The saw follows the template, never the plan.

Queen Victoria Street and the Embankment approaches are red route and bus-heavy with no stopping, so unloading is into a building's own basement bay or a booked side-street window, not the main road. Most buildings run a security desk with contractor sign-in, and the goods lift needs booking a few days ahead. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing states a maximum length and the shop honours it.

Worktop installation, worktop fabrication and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time. Riverside peninsulas are seen from three sides, so pay for the extra polished edge and end profile rather than leaving a sawn edge facing the room.

Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Height change is checked before we cut. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable. 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.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. All of that is settled at the nesting stage, because a machined piece cannot be adjusted afterwards. The awkward corner is cut first, while the slab is whole.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Polishing a piece that cannot reach the room wastes a day.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The units stay where they are and only the surface changes. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. Old stone is heavier going out than it looked coming in.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The building keeps working around us.