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. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. It is one line among the others, and it is honest.

1990s dockside flats, 2010s apartment block and 2020s regeneration tower. A gated development controls when a van gets in, where it can stand and for how long, and none of that gets decided on the morning. 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. That is the shape of the day.

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. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. 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. 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.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. The join count is stated with its reason. 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. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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 street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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.