Kitchen worktops in Canada Water

Yes. Developer flats almost without exception - handleless slab units in an open-plan living space, kitchen along one wall with a 2.4m to 3m run and a small return or a narrow island, and the original 20mm laminate or thin composite being swapped out as the first blocks reach their second owner. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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.

1990s dockside flats, 2010s apartment block and 2020s regeneration tower. Windows are small and set to suit the elevation rather than the room, so most of the wall above the worktop is solid. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.

Everything goes through a concierge and a booked service lift with a delivery slot, loading bays are timed, and the goods route runs through basement car parks with 2m headroom that a long-wheelbase van clears but a roof-racked slab frame does not. Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. 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. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them. The whole job is dictated by the service lift booking - one slot, one lift, so the tops get cut into liftable pieces and jointed on site.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The beading was covering a bowed wall. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Programme work takes the flats in sequence. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Developer carcasses are thin cam-lock chipboard, which is entirely adequate under laminate and wants bracing before stone. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. A bad floor is corrected under the carcass, never with sealant.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. The day is built around that window.

Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Strip out first, then measure what is actually there.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes.