Kitchen worktops in Chelsea Harbour

Yes. Purpose-built apartments with kitchens designed into the plan from the start - a galley or L against a service core, typically 3-3.4m plus an island or peninsula of 1.8-2.4m, and no chimney breasts or period quirks to work around. Replacements here are usually swapping tired 1990s granite for new large-format slabs, keeping sink and hob in place because the services are all in a fixed riser. 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. 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.

late 1980s marina apartment tower, podium-deck apartment block, hotel and serviced residence and design centre and mixed-use building. Concrete panel walls bow noticeably over the length of a run, so the template picks up the real line and the back edge is cut to follow it. The plaster is bonded straight onto the concrete, so the bottom course of tiles tends to bring plaster with it when the old top comes off, leaving a rough band behind the upstand. What is under the old top is the real question.

Estate management controls the whole site: security barrier at the entrance, visitor and contractor registration, a designated loading bay and a booked goods lift with a fitted protection kit. Almost everything is above ground on a podium over parking, so there is a long level trolley run from the lift lobby to the flat door, and residents' corridors have carpet that needs boarding. 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. 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 installation and worktop fabrication, in that order. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. Same slab run, or it is not a match. Straightforward stone, bureaucratic building - book the goods lift and the bay a week out or you will be standing at the barrier with a full van.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The join is the last thing finished. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. 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.

The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. Changing an appliance after the nest is set means recutting the piece, not adjusting it. 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.