Worktop installation in Barbican

Yes. Barbican is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. We would rather ask than guess. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Ceiling heights dropped after the war, so there is less wall between the worktop and the wall units than in anything older. Access is generally through the front door and a short straight hall into the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than a Victorian terrace, though rear access through a back garden or shared path is often the better route if it exists. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. 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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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 kerb decides the start time.

Not particularly, and it would be easy to pretend otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a point about the buildings round here, not about the job. The quoting, the cutting and the fitting are identical here to anywhere else we work. 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. 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. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Unlock any rear or shared path gate and clear both the hall and the back approach so we can choose the better route on the day. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. 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. A locked door costs the day, not an hour.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. A floor that falls across the depth of a run rather than along it tips the carcasses front to back, and packing the front feet changes the overhang while it fixes the level. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. 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. Van to door is the distance that matters.

Our own installers do the carry, so there is nobody in the middle to argue with about it. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Where only one car serves the building a breakdown on the morning halts the job outright, so the fallback route is worked out at template rather than on the landing. 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.

The quote is itemised, so a job where you already hold the slab is the same job with the material line taken off it. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together.