Kitchen worktops in St Katharine Docks

Yes. Apartments around the marina have modest kitchens, often 2.4m to 3m in a galley or L opening to a dining area, with plenty of duplexes where the kitchen sits on the entry level. Refits here are almost always replacements in a sound kitchen rather than a full knock-through. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Where the van must move, the waste goes on first.

1970s-80s marina apartment block, converted dock warehouse and recent infill apartment. The ceiling is an in-situ concrete soffit under a skim, so an extractor goes out through the wall rather than up through anything. Ex-council flats and maisonettes are built in dense concrete and blockwork, so anything that has to be fixed back, such as brackets under a peninsula or support for an end panel, goes in with proper anchors and an SDS rather than plasterboard fixings. The fabric gets checked while it is open.

The estate is privately managed with barrier-controlled vehicle entry, so the van needs booking in and a time-limited pass to reach the block door. Once inside it is a flat, level route across paved quayside, but lifts are small 1970s cars and some blocks route deliveries through a basement service corridor. Estate roads are often too tight for a long-wheelbase van to turn, so the carry starts a good deal further from the door than a map suggests. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.

Worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered. Barrier and dwell-time limits mean the slab comes off the van in one go, so the crew and the route need to be sorted before it arrives.

An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. 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. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. 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 half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Emptying the room belongs to the keyholder, not the crew. 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.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. 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. The floor is a screed over concrete finished in vinyl, hard and flat but rarely level, so the units are packed rather than the stone being cut down to meet them. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. Old fixings come out of soft brick and better ones go in.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. Sign-in at the gate, a permit on the dash and a named contact are usually wanted before anything comes off the van. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip.