Kitchen worktops in Greenwich Peninsula

Yes. Almost entirely developer-fitted open-plan kitchens in apartments, one wall run plus an island or peninsula facing the living space, typically 2.6m to 3.4m, in thin laminate or budget composite that owners replace at ten to fifteen years. Layouts repeat floor to floor, so one template often covers several flats in the same block. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. Distance from tail lift to door is the whole risk here.

2000s Millennium Village housing, 2010s-2020s high-rise apartments and riverside warehouse conversion. 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. Exposed brick is the defining issue: the face is uneven by 10mm or more across a bay, so a stone splashback either scribes to it, which means the back of the panel has to be relieved, or it is deliberately set proud on a subframe with a shadow reveal all round. A bowed wall is what decides between an upstand and a panel.

Everything goes through a loading bay and a goods lift on a booked slot, with floor and lift protection and a concierge who wants notice; the lift car dimension, not the front door, decides maximum slab length. A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. 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. Where it will not come out whole it comes out in sections.

Worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget. Measure the service lift diagonal first, a 3m piece that won't stand up in the car has to be jointed, and that joint has to land somewhere defensible.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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. A galley shows both walls at the same time. A deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Levels get corrected before the new top is measured. 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.

A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The surface changes and the kitchen stays the one they know. 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.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Return ends are polished, not left sawn.

A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Exposed brick and steel is the whole job here, because neither of them presents a flat plane to scribe to. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The batch is held while the tops are cut, or the colour drifts.

Sealing is the one maintenance job that genuinely differs by material, and it is worth knowing which you are buying before the slab is chosen. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. Steel columns and downstands land where the frame put them, which is frequently in the middle of what would otherwise be a clean run. Setting proud is usually the better call: it reads as a deliberate detail rather than a bad fit, and it avoids trying to scribe stone to a surface that has no consistent plane. Dry lining behind a panel needs a fixing plan of its own.

It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. The goods lift is generous and the flat entrance often is not, so the tightest point on the route is inside the flat rather than in the building. Setting the panel proud on a subframe with a shadow gap reads as a detail; scribing to raw brick rarely does. Old plaster rarely gives you a flat metre.