Kitchen worktops in White City

Yes. Two extremes on the same postcode: 1930s estate flats with small closed kitchens of 2.0-2.6m and original ventilated larder recesses, and brand-new tower apartments with open-plan islands of 2.4-3m over a fixed services box. In the estate blocks the kitchen window is deep-set in a thick wall, so the worktop needs a generous scribe at the sill end. A bay shared across a parade of shops turns over all day, so the arrival time matters more than the length of the booking does. 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. Waste needs a space of its own and the street rarely offers one.

1930s balcony-access estate block, postwar maisonette, 2010s-2020s high-rise apartment tower and former television studio conversion. A tower block runs one or two lifts for many floors, so a lift out of service postpones a job rather than making it harder. Plaster bonded straight onto concrete comes away with the bottom course of tiles, leaving a band behind the upstand. The wall behind the old top has not been seen in years.

The older blocks are balcony access, which means the last leg is an open external walkway with a handrail on one side and front doors on the other - a slab on edge has to be walked, not wheeled, and wind on the upper decks is a genuine factor. New towers are the opposite: booked bay, goods lift, protection kit, and a security desk that will not let you past without a sign-in. Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops it. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. Two carries in one day needs the route free for both.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. On the 1930s decks the wind will catch a slab on edge above the third floor, so carry it flat to the door and stand it up inside.

Everything on an island is fed from underneath, extraction, a socket run, a hob and sometimes a waste, and each of them wants its hole before the top is bonded down. The existing layout is being kept, so the question is whether the old carcasses will take stone in that shape without more support. Level the units first, measure the shape second. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. The old top has been hiding it, so the first honest look at it happens when the laminate comes off. The old top hid it. The drawing will not. 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 a landlord or housing provider is involved there is a specification to meet and a process to follow, and both are settled before a date is offered. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it. 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.

A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. Old laminate has often been holding a run square for years, and taking it off shows what the units were really doing. The units stay, the surface changes.

Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Concrete panel walls bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and the back edge is cut to follow it. Anything that has to be held back goes into concrete with proper anchors rather than into a plug and a hope. Old tops were scribed to a wall that has moved since.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. Carcasses have to be sound first.

Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Kitchens are compact and standardised, which makes the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines a larger share of the total than the stone. Unit legs are reset where they have bottomed out on the slab, since the old top hid the difference and stone will not. What the last fitter did to the wall shows up on strip-out.