Kitchen worktops in Bow

Yes. Two very different jobs sit side by side: the big early-Victorian houses around the squares take a proper kitchen-diner with an island of 2.4m to 3m, while the standard bylaw terraces off the market end are galley kitchens in a narrow back addition. Converted factory flats have open-plan kitchens along one wall with a breakfast bar facing the living space. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

Georgian and early Victorian square terrace, Victorian bylaw terrace, 1980s-90s factory conversion and 2010s apartment block. Ceilings are high in these, so wall unit heights and splashback heights are open choices rather than things the room has already decided. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.

The market days on the main shopping street close the loading options completely, and side streets have permit bays with dispensation needed from the borough. Factory conversions have wide industrial stair cores and a goods lift, which is the easiest access in the area, but the flats themselves have long internal corridors with tight turns at the kitchen door. A lift out of service for the day turns a straightforward install into a stair carry, so the slot gets confirmed with whoever manages the building rather than against a calendar. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.

Worktop installation, in that order. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time. The converted mill flats have genuinely long uninterrupted runs, so you are into slab-yield planning and matched joints rather than the usual terrace offcut job.

Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. 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. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. The stone itself starts at £110 per square metre supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines instead of rolled together.

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. A rolling programme loses a flat to one missing key. Tell us about the building at the point of booking, so the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are allowed for in advance.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Car depth is the number that settles it wherever a piece cannot be stood upright, and most residential cars are shallower than the run they are serving. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. A cast iron soil stack runs down the outside of the rear wall, so moving the sink means a fresh penetration through solid brick. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. No payment is due before the template. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The building keeps working around us.