Kitchen worktops in Wapping

Yes. Warehouse loft apartments have big open volumes where the kitchen is a defined block in the middle of the floor, so you get a 3m plus run against exposed brick plus a substantial island with waterfall ends. Ceilings are high, beams are exposed and cabinetry is often bespoke, so the stone has to be set out against timber that is not straight. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Victorian riverside warehouse conversion, 1980s dockside new-build and post-war estate. The goods lift is generous and the flat entrance often is not, so the tightest point on the route is inside the flat rather than in the building. The goods lift is often industrial and generous, but the flat entrance and any internal turn into a mezzanine or split level can be tighter than anything in the building, so we walk the full route with a tape before unloading. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

The high street is narrow, cobbled in places and lined with tall converted warehouses with no forecourt, and parking is permit-only with very few bays. Many conversions retain a small original hoist-style lift or a tight brick stair core, and buildings often require a river-side or courtyard route agreed with the porter in advance. A hoisted piece needs a clear drop zone, a lifting plan and someone stationed at street level, none of which gets arranged on the morning. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop fabrication, worktop design & quotation and worktop installation, in that order. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Cutting several kitchens from different slabs and calling them matched is where firms get caught out. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Exposed brick and reclaimed timber never give you a straight reference line, so the island gets set out to the floor and the perimeter gets scribed to the wall.

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 deep scribe comes out of the nest, so how far the stone has to be relieved changes which part of the slab the piece is cut from. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Priced as fabrication, not as area. 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 the owner is not local, the decisions happen remotely, so photographs and a clear itemised drawing carry more weight than a showroom visit ever would. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. The approved drawing is the instruction. 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.