Kitchen worktops in Canning Town

Yes. New regeneration blocks have compact open-plan kitchens with a 2.4m to 3m run and a tall appliance stack, no island, and a balcony door at one end. Older estate flats keep a separate kitchen of around 2.2m with a boiler cupboard eating the corner. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

post-war council estate, 1980s low-rise and 2010s onwards regeneration apartment block. The handrail is fixed to the wall side of the flight, so the clear width at hand height is a hundred millimetres less than the stair measures at the tread. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. The plaster behind it is the real question.

The area is carved up by flyovers, the tunnel approach and red routes, so the practical unloading point is often inside an estate or a development service yard rather than the nearest road. New blocks require the managing agent to sign off a delivery slot, and lift dimensions vary a lot between phases of the same development. Car depth is the number that settles it wherever a piece cannot be stood upright, and most residential cars are shallower than the run they are serving. 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. Upstands make almost any turn a worktop will not.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The doors are staying, so the colour answers to them. Different phases of the same regeneration scheme have different lift sizes, so confirm the block, not just the postcode, before promising a single-piece top.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. The same shape decides where splashback pieces break, and a joint in a corner reads as a detail while one in a clear run reads as a mistake. Upstands follow the return round the corner. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. The panel takes its height off the steel. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Planned programmes run several kitchens in sequence, so template, fabrication and fitting move as a rolling operation and one uncollected key holds up more than one flat. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The plumber is booked by whoever holds the contract. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. It is usually the full-height panels rather than the tops that will not make the turn, and that only shows up when they arrive. Two people to a panel, however light it looks on the van.

Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. The carry is the constraint: a single stair with tight half-landings, or deck access with a long walk from the lift. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Old plaster gets scribed to, never fought with.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. 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. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. The hob panel is sized after the extractor, not before.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. A tall panel that fits at the worktop will stand off the wall at the top unless the wall is dubbed out or the panel is scribed. Upstands sit tight because both edges are cut.