Kitchen worktops in Paddington

Yes. Basin-side apartment blocks with developer kitchens - a 3m wall run in a matt finish plus a peninsula facing the living area, integrated appliances, and a stone-effect surface the second owner wants swapped for real quartz. Almost no layout changes, all like-for-like upgrades. The goods lift has its own booking sheet, and a bay slot without a lift slot only gets the stone as far as the lobby. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation.

2000s canalside tower, 2010s Merchant Square apartment and Victorian terrace. The room is genuinely square and the units are plumb, so the visit is more about the building than about the kitchen. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.

These towers run a full logistics process - book the loading bay off the estate road, a two-hour slot, ID and RAMS to concierge, protection in the lift, and no works outside 8am to 6pm weekdays. Some blocks require materials to go through a basement service corridor rather than the residential lobby. Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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 strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The fastest upgrade a sound kitchen has. Concierge slots are short, so the whole slab set has to be on site in one movement - stage it kerbside first rather than making three trips to the van.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old cut-out was hiding the notch you now need. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. The gap between tenancies is the whole window. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. No payment is due before the template. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The whole run is dry-fitted before any adhesive is opened.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. 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 sets what the day actually looks like.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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 carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. One flat out of use at a time.