Kitchen worktops in Bunhill

Yes. Predominantly flats in tall blocks with compact galley kitchens of 2.4-2.8m against a fixed services wall. The newer developments have open-plan kitchen-living rooms, but the floorplates favour a peninsula return over a freestanding island. 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. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

post-war estate block, modern tower, warehouse conversion and Victorian block. Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. Setting proud is usually the better call: it reads as a deliberate detail rather than a bad fit, and it avoids trying to scribe stone to a surface that has no consistent plane. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.

Congestion Charge zone with red routes on City Road and Old Street, plus a low-traffic scheme covering the residential streets behind. Tower access runs through a booked service lift and an agreed delivery window with the managing agent. 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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. 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. Managing agents here run tight access rules, so confirm lift dimensions and protection requirements in writing at template stage rather than turning up with a full van.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Corners get their own pieces. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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.

A let property is specified for durability and for a fixed window, and both of those are legitimate reasons to choose differently. 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.