Kitchen worktops in Poplar

Yes. The planned post-war housing has small, well-proportioned separate kitchens of roughly 2m to 2.5m with a serving hatch that people either keep or close up. Newer regeneration flats put the kitchen along the flank of an open living space with a 2.8m run and no island. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

1950s Festival-era planned estate, 1960s-70s concrete tower and 2010s onwards regeneration block. A tower block runs one or two lifts for many floors, so a lift out of service postpones a job rather than making it harder. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Estate roads are wide with parking courts, but many are behind bollards or resident barriers and the shopping precinct is pedestrianised, so the last stretch is often on foot. Concrete towers here have narrow original lifts with a low car height, which matters for a slab carried on edge. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Sealed before we leave. Lift car height, not just floor area, decides whether a 3m piece goes up on edge or gets jointed in the workshop.

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. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. The units stay, the surface changes. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. 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.

Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. One visit, our own installers. 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.