Kitchen worktops in Surrey Quays

Yes. Mostly 1980s and 1990s brick townhouses and low-rise flats built over the filled docks, with narrow galley kitchens at the rear ground floor, roughly 2.5m of run plus a short return, and integrated appliances that were never designed to come out easily. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. Panels come off the van in one trip where possible, since a tall piece handled repeatedly is a piece asking to be chipped. A narrow gap between parked cars decides how a panel turns.

1980s dock redevelopment housing, 1990s townhouse and 2010s apartment block. Rooflights over the rear bring light straight down onto the worktop, which shows a polished finish and any step at a join. 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. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.

Estate roads loop and dead-end around the water, so satnav puts you on the wrong side of a dock; most houses have an allocated bay or an integral garage forecourt within carrying distance of the door. The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. 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, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Sockets final before template. These kitchens were built to a budget with 600mm carcasses that have sagged, so the units usually need packing and levelling before a stone top goes anywhere near them.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying 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. A window board below worktop height ends the upstand argument. Material starts at £110 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines rather than inside one figure.

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 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Nothing goes behind the hob until the wall is signed off. 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.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Drives with a dropped kerb and a tight turn-in take a long van at an angle, and that angle decides which side the tail lift can work from. Splashbacks are normally the last thing off, so a short parking window is exactly when they get rushed. These travel flat and get carried on edge, and both want room.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. 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. 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.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The lift car, the loading bay and the building manager decide the piece sizes here, not the slab. What decides between a slim upstand and full-height stone is nearly always the wall rather than the taste. The extractor position is measured before the panel is drawn.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Developer carcasses are thin cam-lock chipboard, which is entirely adequate under laminate and wants bracing before stone. Splashbacks come off the same slab run as the tops, which means the decision has to be made before fabrication starts. Behind the hob is where full height earns its cost.