Worktop installation in Cheapside

Yes. Cheapside is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC2V. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The flat entrance door is a certified fire door on a closer, and taking it off for an hour means dealing with the seals and the closer before the day ends. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in. 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. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. Shared-house kitchens take heavier use from more people than a family kitchen does, and the surface gets chosen on that basis rather than on looks. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. That family has lived on a building site long enough. Where a single building holds several small kitchens, the work arrives as one job rather than four, and it should be cut off the same slab run so the batches genuinely match. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there.

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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward corner goes in first, not last. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. 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 slot belongs to whoever can open the door.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Chimney breasts are often taken out at ground level and left standing above, so the middle of the run is newer wall than the two ends of it. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Sink and hob seated and sealed before we go.

Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Cut-outs, edge profile and join count are itemised, so taking one out removes a line rather than starting an argument. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. 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. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. Because a peninsula is seen from both sides, the underside of any overhang gets the same edge treatment as the top, which is easy to leave out of a spec. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Damage found on the bench never leaves the workshop, and damage on the carry is remade under the same cover. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted.