Kitchen worktops in Fish Island

Yes. Warehouse and live-work units have the kitchen as a free-standing block in an otherwise open shell, so it is long straight runs with an exposed island and full-height end panels rather than anything fitted into a corner. The newer blocks along the navigation have compact single-wall kitchens in an open-plan living room. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

converted industrial unit, live-work warehouse and 2015 onwards riverside apartment block. Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

Access is off narrow industrial roads with working yards and gates that get locked outside hours, so a delivery slot has to be agreed with the building manager. Older converted units often have a wide roller shutter at ground level, which is the easiest slab entry anywhere in the borough, but the upper live-work floors are reached by an open industrial stair. Communal stairs get boarded and the handrail padded, and we walk the route with a tape before the first piece leaves the van. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Handling points are marked on the crate before it is strapped.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. One kept offcut saves a whole flat later. Ceilings are high and the units are open, so islands are exposed on all four sides and every edge and mitre is visible from across the room.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Radiused, polished, and clear of the joins. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

Quartz is the sensible default in a rental: nothing to seal, nothing to maintain, and nothing an incoming tenant needs briefing on. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The signature on the drawing carries the cost of it. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are, since the flat entrance is often tighter than the goods lift. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Dust extraction indoors, or the cut happens outside.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Pieces are dry-assembled and checked on the bench before anything is loaded. Repeat runs come off a jig, not a fresh setout.

A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Weight tells on a staircase more than anywhere else, because there is nowhere to set a piece down mid-flight and no way to change your grip once it is moving. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.