Worktop installation in Bankside

Yes. Bankside is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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 parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A balcony door is the only other opening in the flat and it leads nowhere useful, so everything comes in through the front door. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted. Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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.

Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop fabrication comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The void ends whether we have finished or not.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. 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. 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. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.

What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. 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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side.

How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear.