Kitchen worktops in Isle of Dogs

Yes. The 1980s dockside houses have small original kitchens of about 2.2m that owners usually open into the dining room, gaining a peninsula rather than a full island. The towers around the docks run open-plan single-wall kitchens with an integrated appliance stack at one end. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. The van has to stand through both halves of the day.

1980s LDDC dockside housing, 1990s dock warehouse conversion, 2010s onwards tower and post-war estate. Open-plan living makes the kitchen furniture rather than utility, so the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab. The room itself is the easy part: walls are plumb, corners are square and the floor is flat, so scribes are minimal and joins can be tight. Same units, straighter line, better surface.

The peninsula has limited road access with congestion at the north end, and the internal roads are heavily bollarded around the docks, so routes are longer than they look. Older low-rise dockside houses have narrow front doors and a stair immediately behind them, while the towers need concierge-booked lifts. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer. It is worth checking on the peninsula whether the address is a 1980s house or a modern tower, because they are completely different access jobs at the same postcode.

Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Old runs are rarely square, and stone will not forgive it. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. Material is from £110 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting are each quoted on their own line.

Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner. If we know the building when you book, the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are worked into the day rather than found on it.

A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The last trade in inherits every delay before it.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Where the seam went before is not where it goes now.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The kitchen is usually part of the living space, so three edges are read from a sofa rather than from standing height at the sink. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the job is a day, and what makes it a difficult day is the building. A single day, planned properly.