Kitchen worktops in Bermondsey

Yes. Two very different jobs sit side by side here: bay-front terraces off Southwark Park Road where the kitchen has been pushed into a side-return extension with a 3.5m run under a rooflight, and Bermondsey Street warehouse flats where the kitchen is a single long galley run against a load-bearing brick flank wall with an island floated in the open-plan middle. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. Old tops out and new stone in, both through the same gap.

Victorian terrace, Victorian warehouse conversion, 1930s LCC estate block and 2010s infill flats. The addition wall is half a brick thick in places and has usually had a damp course injected and been re-plastered, which leaves it neither flat nor consistent. Lath-and-plaster and bowed brickwork mean we template for scribes rather than straight cuts, and each piece is offered up and eased in rather than dropped straight down. What is under the old top is the real question.

Jamaica Road and Tower Bridge Road are red routes with no stopping, so slabs come off on the side streets under a CPZ suspension; warehouse conversions usually mean a single narrow original stair with a half-landing turn, not a lift. A walk-up with winders at every half-landing means the piece is rested and re-gripped on the way, so the crew size goes up before the piece size comes down. 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. That is agreed before a plumber is booked.

Worktop templating, worktop installation and worktop replacement, in that order. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A plumber either side of us. In the warehouse flats nothing is square or plumb - the brickwork bellies, so every back edge gets scribed rather than trusted to the tape.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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 ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. A plumber disconnects before we arrive and reconnects after we leave, and that is worth booking early. Sound carcasses are the condition. 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.