Kitchen worktops in Millwall

Yes. Waterside flats around the inner dock typically have a galley kitchen of 2.4m to 3m running off the hall, closed on both sides, with the living room kept for the dock view. Some larger units have been opened up, which produces one long run plus an island squeezed against a structural column. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. We stage the strip-out so the old tops leave in one trip rather than trickling out across the afternoon. The waste run is planned, not improvised.

1980s dock-edge low-rise, 1990s-2000s waterside apartment block and recent high-rise. These buildings have firm rules about what can be propped open, left in a lobby or carried through the residents entrance. The work is all in the building, not the kitchen. What is under the old top is the real question.

Blocks sit around the dock edge with restricted vehicle access to the water side, meaning the van parks at the road frontage and the slab is walked round the dock path. Many buildings are gated with a single narrow lift and a step-up threshold at the lobby door. Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. Worth remembering that the old tops have to come out the way the new ones come in, and a laminate run is easier to remove in one length than to carry in one. It sets what the day actually looks like.

Worktop templating, worktop replacement and worktop installation, in that order. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. The carcasses have to be sound, because stone is several times the weight of what is coming off. A day, not a project. Structural columns in the middle of opened-up flats are common, and a top that has to notch round one needs the column dimensions taken at template, not from a plan.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. The template records every angle in that shape as it actually is rather than as the plan drew it. Real angles, not plan angles. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. It is recorded on the drawing with the run dimensions so the workshop is not guessing. 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.

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. If the carcasses are tired the honest answer is that stone will find that out, and it is better said before than after. 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.