Worktop installation in Bank

Yes. Bank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2R, EC3V. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Boxed soil stacks and ventilation ducts run behind the units, and the boxing depth changes between floor level and worktop height. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

Booked delivery windows on a managed estate run to an hour, and a worktop install does not happen inside an hour. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The crew size follows from it. 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. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Handover day is a hard stop.

Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Offered up twice, bonded once. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. 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. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Protection goes down along it first.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. 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.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Support first, stone second.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Handover kitchens are fitted with the cheapest carcass the specification allowed, and cam-lock chipboard boxes are what a stone top has to sit on. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. The tops go on level even when nothing else is.