Kitchen worktops in Colliers Wood

Yes. Two distinct jobs sit side by side here. The riverside apartments off the Wandle came with developer-spec kitchens where owners swap the composite or laminate top for quartz and keep the layout, while the terraces behind the High Street get a modest rear extension with a single wall run and a small breakfast peninsula. 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. 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. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

Victorian terrace, 1930s semi, 2010s riverside apartment and Postwar tower block. Dot-and-dab plasterboard bellies at a taped internal angle, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. The work is all in the building, not the kitchen. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

The new blocks have loading bays and a goods lift but both need booking with the concierge and there is a hard time limit on the bay. The older terraces sit on streets that back onto the river and industrial units, so vans get boxed in by delivery traffic on the A24. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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 strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Same batch, same run, same day. Developer kitchens here are built to a tight 600mm module with the sink already cut into a fixed position, so measure the existing cutouts before quoting a straight swap.

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. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. 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. An upstand rides what a panel exposes. 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.

The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. Full-height panels need the wall made good first, which is another trade and another timescale. Decided before fabrication, not after. 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.