Kitchen worktops in Canary Wharf

Yes. Kitchens are almost entirely open-plan against a structural core wall, with a 3m to 3.5m run of full-height units and an island of 2m to 2.8m that doubles as the dining table. Specifications lean towards large-format porcelain and Dekton for slim edges and matching splashbacks, with waterfall ends on the island. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. A van that has to move mid-fit costs the best part of an hour and takes a man off the tools to do it. We would rather ask than guess.

2000s residential tower, 2015 onwards high-rise apartment and dockside penthouse duplex. Kitchens are compact and standardised, which makes the fixed template, fabrication and fitting lines a larger share of the total than the stone. The kitchen is usually a small square or L-shaped room reached through a narrow entrance lobby and a standard internal doorway, so the limit on piece length is the turn out of the lobby, and short runs mean joins are often avoidable altogether if the layout is nested tightly. Every join over a gable, clear of every cut-out.

This is a privately managed estate: vehicles need a permit, deliveries go through designated basement loading docks with height restrictions around 2m, and security clearance plus insurance documents are checked at the gate. Goods lifts are booked in advance by the building manager in fixed slots, and residential floors are reached only after a long basement corridor trolley run. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. The drawing carries that decision through to the saw.

Worktop installation, worktop design & quotation and worktop fabrication, in that order. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Everything is itemised: material, template, fabrication, fitting, each cut-out and each metre of upstand. Nothing payable until we template. The paperwork and the goods lift booking take longer than the fit, and a missed slot means the slab goes back on the van.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The join is the last thing finished. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. It is fabrication time rather than material, so it appears on the fabrication line and not in the square metre figure. Photographs are worth more than a plan here. 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.

A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door, communal or otherwise. One visit, our own installers. 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.