Kitchen worktops in East Village

Yes. Every flat came with the same developer kitchen: a single-wall run of roughly 2.7m to 3.2m in an open living space, wall units to one side and a tall appliance stack, with no island. Almost all work here is replacing the original top like for like in a fully fitted kitchen, so cabinets stay and the stone has to match the existing sink and hob positions. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. They go in with the first load where the stop is short.

2012 athletes' village apartment and post-2015 infill apartment block. Ceiling heights are held to the minimum the plan allows, so the panel between worktop and wall units is a short piece. The plasterboard is genuinely flat here, so a full-height splashback sits well and a slim upstand looks almost redundant, but the sockets are the problem, because they are set out to the developer's original kitchen and often land at odd heights or right on a joint line. Height, returns and sockets, all settled on site.

The estate is car-free in the residential courtyards with a private management company controlling access, so vehicles use designated service bays and the last stretch is a trolley run across podium paving. Deliveries and lift use must be booked with the estate management team, usually with a fixed window and a lift protection requirement. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. 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. Both movements are planned as one.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. 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. Because the kitchens are identical across blocks, the layouts repeat, but the estate access rules mean the booking has to be made before the template is even scheduled.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. 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. Window reveals take a piece of their own. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old carcasses are rarely level and never were. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded into one figure.

Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Replacement suits occupied stock better than a strip-out. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. No money changes hands before the template. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. Twenty millimetres of packing behind a panel is not a fix.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. The seam sits in shadow or it sits in a corner.

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. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. Upstands follow the run exactly, so every internal and external corner is a separate mitred or butted piece. A galley shows both walls at the same time.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. The old top leaves by the route the new one arrives on.