Kitchen worktops in Hackney Wick

Yes. Industrial conversions and new blocks, so the kitchen runs open-plan against one wall of the main space with a 3.5-4m run and an island or a long peninsula. Ceilings are high and services are surface-run, which changes where a splashback can sensibly stop. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days.

former factory and warehouse conversion, live-work unit, new-build apartment and canal-side development. Ceilings are high and there are usually no wall units, so a splashback runs to whatever height is decided rather than to a cupboard. The goods lift is often industrial and generous, but the flat entrance and any internal turn into a mezzanine or split level can be tighter than anything in the building, so we walk the full route with a tape before unloading. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

Narrow lanes between the canal and the railway, gated yards, and buildings designed around goods vehicles rather than parking, a few still with loading doors and hoists. Newer blocks have booked service lifts while the older conversions can mean a long industrial stair. Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. It is settled on the bench, not on site.

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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Repeat runs come off a jig, not a fresh setout. Walls in these converted units are rarely plumb and often bare brick, so an upstand shows every undulation and a separate stone splashback scribed to the wall works far better.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Cut to the plotted line, not the nominal one. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Where a letting agent sits between us and the owner the approval passes through two sets of hands, so a quote has to be clear enough to forward without a covering explanation. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. An agent forwarding a drawing is not approving it. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. No money is taken before the template happens. 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. The route is walked before the first lift.

Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Windows are large industrial openings with deep sills, and a run finishing at one meets a reveal a full brick deep. These read as easy from outside and rarely are, because the flat entrance is tighter than the goods lift. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. Cut it square where it should be radiused and the piece will fail on the lift, not in the kitchen. The mitre is cut to the angle we found, not to ninety.