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 day is built around that window.

1950s Festival-era planned estate, 1960s-70s concrete tower and 2010s onwards regeneration block. Concrete panel walls bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and the back edge is cut to follow it. The carry is the constraint. That is the shape of the day.

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. 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. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. Lift car height, not just floor area, decides whether a 3m piece goes up on edge or gets jointed in the workshop.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. Carcasses have to be sound first. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day. 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.