Kitchen worktops in Limehouse

Yes. Around the basin the flats have open-plan kitchens along one wall with a peninsula facing the water, and the balcony door usually restricts one end of the run. In the older terraces the kitchen is a narrow back room, typically 2.4m, with a chimney breast to work around. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Georgian and Victorian terrace, canal basin apartment block, wharf conversion 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. New-build rooms are genuinely square, but they are dot-and-dab plasterboard, and the taped internal angle is where it goes wrong - the board bellies at the corner and the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm. Recorded as it is, not as it was drawn.

The main east-west road is a red route with a tunnel approach, so all loading happens on the residential side streets which are CPZ-controlled with tight bays. Basin-side buildings have secure gates and some blocks are only reachable across pedestrian bridges, which rules out trolleying and makes it a carry. Garden routes carry their own hazards: a drain cover, a step up to a patio, wet decking, or a lawn that will not take a loaded trolley. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. The template records it along with everything else.

Worktop installation, worktop templating and worktop replacement, in that order. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. A day, not a project. Waterside flats have balcony thresholds and glazing right at the end of the run, so the last 300mm of the top usually needs a bespoke cut rather than a square end.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. One datum for the whole room. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. The template plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Plotted, not estimated. 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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. 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.