Worktop installation in Blackfriars

Yes. Blackfriars is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4V, EC4Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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. We would rather ask than guess. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Open-plan living makes the kitchen furniture rather than utility, so the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab. 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. The house sets the order of work. Taped internal angles in plasterboard belly at the corner, so the run picks up a few millimetres over the last 300mm and a plan-angle mitre will not close. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward metre takes the longest.

Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The kerb decides the start time.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The building keeps working around us.

The free end is what needs deciding early: square edge, mitred apron down the end, or a full waterfall to the floor, and a waterfall is cut in sequence off the same part of the slab. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked with whoever actually holds the keys.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. These buildings have firm rules about what can be propped open, left in a lobby or carried through the residents entrance. 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. Levelled first, then set, then sealed.

A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Peninsulas frequently land on a lightweight partition or on units that were never fixed down, and stone needs proper support under it before it goes on. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. One datum for every run in the room.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Underfloor heating in a screed rules out fixing into the floor and rules out standing anything heavy on a single point. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Levelled under the units first.