Kitchen worktops in World's End

Yes. The estate flats have compact, tightly planned kitchens of roughly 2.0-2.8m with a serving opening to the living room, and the units are shallow with a fixed boiler cupboard in the run. Because the blocks were built as a system, the kitchens repeat almost identically flat to flat, so once you have templated one layout you know what the next one looks like. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. Waste is the part people forget: the old laminate or tired granite has to be walked back to the van and it does not get lighter. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

1970s brown-brick estate towers with deck access, Victorian terrace on the King's Road tail, postwar low-rise flats and shop with maisonette over. Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. The carry is the constraint. The slow parts are slow for a reason.

Vehicles cannot get to most front doors - you park at a designated bay and cross a raised podium and covered walkways on foot, then take a lift that serves several levels of deck. The lifts are narrow with a shallow car depth, so slabs go in on edge and anything over about 2.4m needs the stair, and the stairs are dog-leg concrete with steel handrails at shoulder height. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

Worktop replacement, worktop installation and worktop splashbacks & upstands, in that order. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. One visit, done properly. Repeatable layouts but a brutal carry - the podium walk plus a shallow lift car is why pieces here get jointed at the hob even when they would technically fit the kitchen.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. Going from a 38mm laminate to 20mm or 30mm stone drops the surface, which shows against tiles, a window board and any freestanding appliance. The units stay, the surface changes. Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Eased in, never forced. 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. Protection goes down first. 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.