Kitchen worktops in South Bermondsey

Yes. Predominantly estate flats with small separate kitchens - an L of 2.2m and 1.5m is typical, often with a boxed-in soil stack in the corner and a boiler over the run, so the work is replacing tired laminate on existing carcasses rather than designing from scratch. On an event day the controls are wider, tighter and enforced harder than the signage suggests on any other morning of the week. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Interwar LCC estate, 1960s and 1970s council block, Victorian terrace remnant and 2010s infill. A maisonette puts the kitchen on one of two levels, so an internal staircase may be part of the route as well as the communal one. The rear kitchen wall in ex-council flats and maisonettes is commonly dense in-situ concrete or blockwork with a thin skim, which means mechanical fixings are hard work and the splashback is held on adhesive rather than screwed. The age of the plaster decides the fixing, not the finish.

Balcony-access blocks and deck walkways mean a long carry from the parking court, and lifts in the older blocks are small and frequently out of service; match days around the stadium close roads and fill every kerb. A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. Splashback panels are lighter than a worktop and far more awkward, because a tall thin piece has to be carried on edge and cannot be tilted to clear a turn. They stand upright in the van and stay upright until they are on the wall.

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. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Upstands turn batch offcuts into finished rooms. Assume the carry, not the drive - if the lift is down, a 3m piece is not going up a deck-access stair, so it gets cut to two.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The step between rooms is packed out first. 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. It is usually what pushes a job towards a 100mm upstand instead of a full-height panel, because an upstand rides what a panel exposes. The sill caps the upstand before anything else does. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside 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. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Priced on its own line so it can be deferred. Let us know the building when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are handled beforehand rather than on the fitting day.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. The practical answer is to check the fixture list before the date is offered, because a template slot lost to a road closure cannot be recovered that week. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Windows sit in deep concrete reveals with a cast sill, and that reveal is usually the least square thing in the room. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. It is quoted by area like the worktop, so a long run is a material line rather than a trim. The internal stair is usually a straight flight with a tight top landing, and it is the landing rather than the flight that is the limit. That suits a full-height piece, because a large flat panel bonded across its back is more stable on concrete than a run of small tiles ever was. The wall makes that decision, not the brochure.