Kitchen worktops in Globe Town

Yes. A lot of estate flats here still have the original compact kitchen off the hall, typically two short runs of 1.8m to 2.2m with a boxed-in soil stack in one corner. Owners tend to replace like for like rather than knock through, so it is small-piece work with a lot of cut-outs around existing services. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. We would rather ask than guess.

1930s LCC walk-up flat, 1960s Lubetkin-era estate block and Victorian terrace. The internal stair is usually a straight flight with a tight top landing, and it is the landing rather than the flight that is the limit. The carry is the constraint. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Balcony-access blocks mean carrying stone along an open deck and through a 760mm front door, and the older walk-ups have no goods lift at all. Street parking is CPZ-controlled and the estate roads have height barriers on the parking courts, so the van usually sits on the main road and the slab is carried in. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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 splashbacks & upstands and worktop installation, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Sealed before we leave. Deck-access flats are a two-man carry every time, so pieces get sized to what will physically turn into the door rather than what looks best on paper.

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 joint to the worktop is siliconed, never grouted. 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. 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. Make the wall good first, or accept the detail. 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.

Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. One visit, our own installers. 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.