Worktop installation in Canary Wharf

Yes. Canary Wharf is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. 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. The van does not stay on a main road once it is empty. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Some of these are dry-lined on battens over the concrete, so a fixing either finds a batten or goes straight through to the panel behind. The carry is the constraint. The slow parts are slow for a reason. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. 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. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The room cleared before the crew arrives.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. Three stools along one side need more clear length than most plans allow, and once the seating depth is fixed the piece either grows or it loses a seat. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. A refuse chute or a service duct takes a corner of the kitchen in several of the standard plans, and neither of them moves. The stairwell half-landing is usually the tightest point on the whole route and it dictates the maximum piece. The house sets the order of work.