Kitchen worktops in Thamesmead

Yes. The original estate housing has small planned kitchens with concrete or dense blockwork walls and standard 600mm units in a single or double run; the later brick-built housing association terraces are slightly more generous but still galley. Islands are rare because the rooms were never sized for them. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. A templater circling for a space arrives late into a slot that was already tight, and the drawing is what suffers. The templater needs a proper stop, not a pause.

1960s-70s system-built concrete estate, deck-access maisonette, 1980s housing association terrace and 2010s regeneration block. Many have been extended at the rear since being sold, so the kitchen is half original and half newer with a floor junction between the two. Unit height is the other issue: legs sit on an uneven screed or hard concrete with no give, so the template reads the top of every carcass rather than assuming they share a height. Two to three hours, once the units are in.

Raised pedestrian decks, podium levels and garage undercrofts mean the front door is often nowhere near where the van can park, and some blocks are reached only by a walkway or a small lift. The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. The templater measures that route on the same visit, so the drawing leaves site already knowing the maximum piece. It goes on the drawing with the run dimensions.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating 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. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable exactly where the pieces meet. Same batch, same run, same day. Fixing into precast concrete needs the right anchors and serious dust control, nothing here takes a plasterboard fixing.

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 template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. One datum for the whole room. 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. This is the commonest reason a replacement turns out to need more than a straight swap. Found at template, not on fit day. 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. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. Same slab run as the tops. 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.