Kitchen worktops in Liverpool Street

Yes. Residential units are mostly upper-floor conversions in narrow-fronted commercial buildings, so kitchens are long and thin - a 3m single run along one wall with no facing return, and appliances stacked rather than spread. Ceiling heights are generous but the plan is tight, which is why full-height stone behind the run is more common here than wall cupboards. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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 booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive.

Victorian commercial building converted to flats, modern apartment above retail, narrow court and alley building and mixed-use scheme near the station. The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. This is the most managed day we do. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Station-side streets carry very heavy pedestrian flow all day and several approach lanes are pedestrianised or too narrow for a Luton, so the van stops further out than you would like. Entrances are frequently a single door in a narrow court with a straight steep stair and no lift, which caps piece length hard at what two people can pivot on a landing. A short run of external steps before the communal door means a piece is lifted twice before the staircase proper has even started. 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. The way out is measured with the way in.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. No sealing schedule for anybody to forget. Long thin kitchens in narrow buildings mean the run is easy and the stair is not - build the joints around the landing pivot, not the wall length.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. Taking the top off is what exposes the floor. 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.

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. 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 what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The last piece in has the least tolerance left.

Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. It decides whether the old top leaves whole.

The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need.

If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. The porter has to be booked, the goods lift protected with the block's own blankets or our own boards, and communal carpet and stair runners covered from the entrance to the flat door before a single piece moves. The house sets the order of work.