Kitchen worktops in Shadwell

Yes. The older blocks have separate kitchens of about 2.2m in an L, often serving large households, with heavy daily use and a preference for hard-wearing dark quartz. Newer towers near the station have compact open-plan kitchens with a short island of 1.6m to 2m. 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. It sits in the fitting line as time on site rather than as anything to do with the stone. It is one line among the others, and it is honest.

post-war council block, 1980s dock-edge housing and 2010s onwards residential tower. Dot-and-dab plasterboard bellies at a taped internal angle, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

The through road is a red route and the market street is closed to vehicles during trading, so timing the drop matters more than distance. Estate blocks have small lifts and long deck walkways; the new towers have a service lift but need a permit-to-work and a booked slot from the managing agent. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, in that order. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. Heavy-use family kitchens here get an honest conversation about edge chipping and overhang support rather than the thinnest profile available.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. 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. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. 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.

Consent for the work sits with the freeholder or the managing body, and getting it in writing first avoids a crew arriving to a locked door. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first. 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.