Kitchen worktops in Bromley-by-Bow

Yes. The dominant type is a post-war maisonette kitchen of 2m to 2.6m along one wall with a service duct in the corner and a window over the sink. New regeneration flats have small open-plan kitchens with a peninsula, usually already fitted with a laminate top that owners swap out. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1960s-70s slab block, post-war low-rise maisonette and 2010s regeneration apartment. A maisonette puts the kitchen on one of two levels, so an internal staircase may be part of the route as well as the communal one. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. Cut from the same slab run as the tops.

The area is cut in two by a dual carriageway with red route restrictions on the approach, so unloading has to happen inside the estate roads rather than the main road. Estate parking is permit-controlled and the older blocks have a single small passenger lift, often around 1.1m deep, which caps piece length. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. Joint positions follow from that.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. Lift depth decides the job here, so measure the car before quoting a single-piece top for anything above the second floor.

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. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.