Kitchen worktops in Millwall

Yes. Waterside flats around the inner dock typically have a galley kitchen of 2.4m to 3m running off the hall, closed on both sides, with the living room kept for the dock view. Some larger units have been opened up, which produces one long run plus an island squeezed against a structural column. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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.

1980s dock-edge low-rise, 1990s-2000s waterside apartment block and recent high-rise. A riverside block is a managed building with a booked goods lift, a loading bay and a concierge, and all three have to line up on the same day. 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. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Blocks sit around the dock edge with restricted vehicle access to the water side, meaning the van parks at the road frontage and the slab is walked round the dock path. Many buildings are gated with a single narrow lift and a step-up threshold at the lobby door. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. 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. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. 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. Structural columns in the middle of opened-up flats are common, and a top that has to notch round one needs the column dimensions taken at template, not from a plan.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. One datum for the whole room. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. 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.