Kitchen worktops in Barbican

Yes. Chamberlin Powell and Bon designed the kitchens as compact service rooms, so the standard flat has a galley of roughly 2.2-3m against one wall with a fixed extract duct and, in many types, a serving hatch to the dining area. Because the estate is listed the layout largely stays as built, so most work is replacing tired tops with new stone cut to the original footprint, sometimes squaring off where a hatch has been closed up. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. It is a full day at the kerb, not a delivery.

1960s-70s Grade II listed concrete estate, terrace block flat, tower block flat and mews and podium-level maisonette. The window sits in the middle of the run over the sink, and its board and cill set the limit on how tall an upstand can be. Post-war terraces have small, roughly square kitchens with a back door and a window in the middle of the run, so runs are short and joins are rare, but there are usually two corners and a window cill to work around in a couple of metres. What is under the old top is the real question.

There is no vehicle access to the podium at all - you park in one of the estate car parks below, then use a car park lift and walk the highwalks and internal corridors, which can be several hundred metres with multiple fire doors and level changes. Lift cars in the residential cores are small with low ceilings, so anything over about 2.2m has to be assessed against the specific core before you cut. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. With no room to turn, the old top gets cut up in the kitchen instead, which is dusty work and needs the room emptied first. The strip-out is planned around it.

Worktop replacement, worktop templating and worktop splashbacks & upstands, 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. Splashbacks and upstands are cut from the same slab run at the same time, which is the only way the batch actually matches. Siliconed to the worktop, never grouted. Do a full dry run of the route from car park lift to flat door before ordering, because the Barbican's walk-in is longer and more awkward than any staircase in the City.

Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A layout templated off one wall instead of one datum will not sit right once all the pieces are down together. Real angles, not plan angles. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. The laser plots it as it is, at the exact height the worktop will sit, and the drawing carries that through. Measured at worktop height, nowhere else. 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.

An owner living in the house makes the decisions and lives with them, so the specification tends to go towards the material rather than towards the lowest total. A 100mm upstand is the low-maintenance answer, and full-height stone is the one that has to be committed to early. The wall has to be ready. 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.