Worktop installation in Angel

Yes. Angel is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N1, EC1. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. The fitting slot is set around it, which is why we ask about it when the date is booked and not before we leave the yard. The day is built around that window. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The shell has the last word on fitting day. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun.

A step up to a patio or a raised threshold at the back door means the piece is lifted rather than rolled, and that is where the crew size gets decided. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it. 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 aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. We would rather ask than guess.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered.

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. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A day out of use, told to whoever lives there.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A side gate and a back door mean the stone never goes through the house at all, which keeps the dust and most of the risk outside. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. It sets the crew: two fitters where the route is straightforward, four where it is not. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. The walkway between the two runs is fixed by the units either side, so any overhang added to one worktop comes straight off the space somebody has to stand in. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Clamps close the joint, colour match settles it.