Worktop installation in Bunhill

Yes. Bunhill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1Y, EC2A. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Islington. 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. Van to door is the distance that matters. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Many of these kitchens are a fitted pod dropped into open floor, so three sides are free and only the fourth is ever scribed. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

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. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

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. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time.

A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. Confirm loading bay access and lift booking with the building's management, and clear any furniture from the mezzanine stairs or split-level approach. Where a letting agent sits between us and the owner the approval passes through two sets of hands, so a quote has to be clear enough to forward without a covering explanation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The whole slot, or the stone waits.

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. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. 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. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Services coming up through a floor slab mean the island cannot move to suit the stone, so the stone is cut to suit the island. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Older buildings get the extra hour.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes.