Kitchen worktops in Nine Elms

Yes. Almost entirely new-build apartment kitchens: handleless slab doors, an integrated appliance wall, and either a straight peninsula or a small island, all built to the developer's original dimensions. Work here is upgrading a builder-grade top to stone or fitting out shell-and-core units rather than reconfiguring rooms. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

2010s and 2020s high-rise apartment and Converted power station and industrial building. Many of these kitchens are a fitted pod dropped into open floor, so three sides are free and only the fourth is ever scribed. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.

Every building is managed, loading bay booking, a service lift with a stated internal length, dock time limits and a site induction before anyone goes up. The lift diagonal, not the door, is what limits slab size. Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection goes down along it first.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. Booked at short notice, because the notice is short. Get the goods lift internal dimensions in writing before cutting, because a 2.8m piece that will not stand up in the lift car has to be re-cut at the workshop, not on the loading bay.

A downdraught extractor takes a long slot out of the middle of the piece and a motor housing out of the cabinet below it, so what sits under the top is settled before anything is cut. The nest is laid out around that, with joins placed over cabinet gables and kept clear of every cut-out. Every piece is labelled to its place in the run. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. Oversize on the scribe edge, always. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

Inventories record the condition of a kitchen at both ends of a tenancy, which is a practical argument for a surface that looks the same in its fifth year as its first. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. Wear is what the next inventory records. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A car that answers every floor button pressed while a piece is standing in it needs to be held on the key, and the key usually lives at a desk that wants notice. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Concrete or steel overhead means no fixings into the ceiling and no help from the structure for anything hung above the run. 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 thicker top changes what clears the top drawer.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. These read as easy from outside and rarely are, because the flat entrance is tighter than the goods lift. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.