Kitchen worktops in Royal Victoria

Yes. Dockside apartments have open-plan kitchens set along a single wall with a 2.8m to 3.2m run, a tall bank of integrated appliances and an island only in the larger corner units. Duplex and penthouse units carry the bigger specifications, including waterfall island ends and full-height matching splashbacks. Where an event closes the road entirely, the van cannot be moved once it is in, which is a different problem from not being able to park at all. 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 crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

2000s dockside apartment block, 2015 onwards tower and converted dock building. Sprinkler heads and extract ducts are coordinated into the ceiling, so an extractor over an island goes where the services already allow. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it.

The dock roads are wide with proper loading laybys and no market or terraced-street congestion, so getting the van in is genuinely easy. The buildings are the constraint: booked goods lift, concierge sign-in, insurance documents on file, and event days at the nearby exhibition centre bring temporary traffic management. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. 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. A stone top coming out whole needs the same crew as one going in.

Worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The units stay and only the surface changes, so the whole job is one day rather than a kitchen refit. The flat earns nothing while it sits empty. Big exhibition events shut down the approach roads at short notice, so check the venue calendar before committing to a fit date.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. The wall has not moved, and neither has the problem. Supply-only material opens at £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line rather than as a single number.

Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. A replacement keeps the units and changes the surface, which is the least disruptive way to do this in an occupied property. One day out of use, agreed in advance. Say what the building is at the booking stage and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice become part of the plan rather than a surprise.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. We plan the strip-out and the carry as one movement so the kitchen is only out of use for a single day. Timing the two carries is most of the planning.

The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The room is square, the walls are plumb and the floor is flat, so almost every complication in the job belongs to the building rather than the kitchen. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The room is swept and the offcuts leave with us.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. A riverside block is a managed building with a booked goods lift, a loading bay and a concierge, and all three have to line up on the same day. 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. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.