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. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

late 1980s marina apartment tower, podium-deck apartment block, hotel and serviced residence and design centre and mixed-use building. Kitchens are compact and standardised, which makes the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines a larger share of the total than the stone. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

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. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. 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. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Proven on the bench before dispatch. 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.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction. 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.