Kitchen worktops in South Bank

Yes. Predominantly apartment kitchens in managed buildings: an appliance wall plus a peninsula or a compact island, all within the developer's original layout and with no scope to move services. Stone is chosen to be seen from the living area rather than to work hard. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. A replacement is a two-way job, with old tops going out and new stone coming in, so the van needs to stay put across the whole day. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

1980s co-operative housing, Riverside tower and Converted commercial building. Estate roads are narrow with parking courts behind the blocks, so the carry crosses open ground rather than a pavement. The work is all in the building, not the kitchen. Units kept, surface changed, one day.

Everything moves through a service entrance with a booked goods lift, a signed-in delivery window and often a restriction on working before 9am or after 5pm. Riverside frontages have no vehicle access at all, so the loading dock is at the back of the building. 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. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Handover-spec kitchens are square, plumb and predictable, which means the join count is honest and driven by run length rather than by the building. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Buildings here have strict rules on wet cutting and dust, so any on-site adjustment needs extraction and a sheeted area agreed with building management in advance.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The laminate has been covering it up. 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. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Dry-assembled before it leaves. 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.