Kitchen worktops in Chelsea Harbour

Yes. Purpose-built apartments with kitchens designed into the plan from the start - a galley or L against a service core, typically 3-3.4m plus an island or peninsula of 1.8-2.4m, and no chimney breasts or period quirks to work around. Replacements here are usually swapping tired 1990s granite for new large-format slabs, keeping sink and hob in place because the services are all in a fixed riser. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. Two carries in one day doubles what the distance costs.

late 1980s marina apartment tower, podium-deck apartment block, hotel and serviced residence and design centre and mixed-use building. Entry-phone access, a booked lift and a parking bay near the entrance all have to be arranged before a date is confirmed. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. The building has kept moving; the new template catches up.

Estate management controls the whole site: security barrier at the entrance, visitor and contractor registration, a designated loading bay and a booked goods lift with a fitted protection kit. Almost everything is above ground on a podium over parking, so there is a long level trolley run from the lift lobby to the flat door, and residents' corridors have carpet that needs boarding. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The way out is measured with the way in.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Spares crated with the batch and labelled by unit. Straightforward stone, bureaucratic building - book the goods lift and the bay a week out or you will be standing at the barrier with a full van.

A corbel on show under an overhang is a decision about how the piece looks from a stool, so it gets settled alongside the edge profile rather than left to whoever fits it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A corner that will not close is never forced. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. Supply only, material begins at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on separate lines rather than as one number.

Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. A provider specification is cut exactly as written. Describe the building when you book and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice get built into the schedule rather than met on the day.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. 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. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid.

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. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. The kitchen is a narrow room off the hall with the window at the far end, so the run is a galley by construction rather than by choice. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. What is behind the old splashback decides the new one.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match.