Kitchen worktops in Elephant and Castle

Yes. Split between new regeneration flats with compact open-plan kitchens along one wall and a 1.8m breakfast peninsula, and ageing 1960s and 1970s blocks with tiny closed kitchens where the whole job is a 2m replacement top plus upstands. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Handling is where these pieces get damaged.

1960s slab block, 1970s council estate, 2010s regeneration apartment and Georgian terrace pockets. The kitchen is a small square room off a narrow entrance lobby, and the turn out of that lobby is the real limit on piece length. The carry is the constraint. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Major junction and gyratory with red routes on the approaches, so vans get pushed onto side streets; new blocks have booked lifts, old blocks have a single lift per core serving a lot of flats. 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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Sockets final before template. Old block kitchens are so tight that a 3m slab cannot be turned in the hall - measure the doorway swing before promising a single piece.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. 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. 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.

These kitchens tend to be compact and reasonably square, so the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines are a larger share of the total than the stone is. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. 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.