Kitchen worktops in Bankside

Yes. High-spec apartment kitchens, usually a German handleless system with a full-height tall bank, a long island with mitred waterfall ends, and a preference for large-format porcelain or Dekton at 12mm to 20mm rather than heavy stone. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. We would rather ask than guess.

1990s riverside apartment, 2000s glass tower and converted industrial building. These buildings have firm rules about what can be propped open, left in a lobby or carried through the residents entrance. 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. That is the shape of the day.

Riverside towers with a single loading bay, booked service lift, protective floor coverings demanded by building management, and no kerbside anywhere near the entrance. 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. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

Worktop fabrication, worktop installation and worktop design & quotation, in that order. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Nested for the job in front of us. Waterfall ends and mitred edges mean the fabrication tolerances matter more than the fitting - a 1mm out on the mitre shows on a 900mm drop.

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. Each run is priced on its own line against the supply rate, with the join count and the reason for each join stated. The join count is stated with its reason. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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.

Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. Sink and hob are dry-fitted on the bench before dispatch, whoever supplied them. Dry-assembled before it leaves. 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.