Worktop installation in Archway

Yes. Archway is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N19. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. The day is built around that window. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

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 carry is the constraint. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.

A car ceiling at 2.2m sets the tallest thing that will stand in it, and the trap panel and light fitting take a slice off even that. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. 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.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. 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. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Communal heating pipework rises through the flat and is boxed in at floor and at ceiling, and none of it moves for a kitchen. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Two lifts and a turn make it a four-man piece.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. 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 template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Nothing changes hands until after the template. The ceiling is a concrete soffit with a skim on it, so there is nothing to fix into overhead and no void to hide anything in. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Suction pads will not hold on a wet or dusty face.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves.