Kitchen worktops in Homerton

Yes. Estate-heavy, with standard purpose-built kitchens of 2.4-2.8m and services fixed to one wall, alongside Victorian terraces with rear-addition kitchens. The newer flats near the hospital have compact open-plan runs with an integrated hob and little room for anything else. 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. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

Victorian terrace, large post-war estate, 1970s low-rise and new-build apartment. The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Sound carcasses are the one condition.

Estate roads, courtyards and bollarded entries, with lifts in the taller blocks and stair-only access in the low-rise. Homerton High Street has buses and loading limits, and several of the surrounding streets are filtered. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us. The low-rise estate blocks without a lift are the ones to check first, because three flights with a half landing turns a 3m piece into two whether you like it or not.

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. Long runs almost never take a single panel, so the joint positions want agreeing before anything is templated. Joint placement is a decision, not an accident. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Found at template, not on fit day. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Units kept, surface changed. 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.