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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

1950s Festival-era planned estate, 1960s-70s concrete tower and 2010s onwards regeneration block. Entry-phone access, a booked lift and a parking bay near the entrance all have to be arranged before a date is confirmed. The carry is the constraint. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints.

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. Bollards, planters and a one-way service road can turn what looks like a ten-metre carry into a fifty-metre one. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. Lift car height, not just floor area, decides whether a 3m piece goes up on edge or gets jointed in the workshop.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Appliance gaps are checked against the new thickness. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Expect material from £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised on their own lines rather than folded 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it. Mention the building when you book. The lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice then go into the plan instead of turning up on the day.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. No money changes hands before the template. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The balcony door frequently opens off the kitchen, which puts a threshold, a draught and a well-used route through one end of the run. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Sink and hob seated and sealed before we go.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. 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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The kitchen doorway is usually offset into a corner, so one leg of an L is short before anyone has designed anything. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Levelled under the units first.

A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.