Worktop installation in Church Street

Yes. Church Street is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW8, W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. An event-day suspension can override a bay that is perfectly usable the rest of the week, so a booked space gets checked again nearer the time. 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 crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Low-rise blocks are three or four storeys with a single stair and no lift, so pieces go up on edge and the half-landing sets the maximum length. The carry is the constraint. The age of the house sets the pace of it. Boxing built in plasterboard on a light frame will take no useful fixing, so nothing bears on it and the stone is carried off the carcasses either side. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands. Where a road is shut for filming or for works the diversion adds distance to the carry even when parking itself was never the problem. 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. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The void ends whether we have finished or not. 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. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. Nothing changes hands until after the template. The carry is the constraint: a single stair with tight half-landings, or deck access with a long walk from the lift. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The piece is offered up, marked, taken back out and cut, and that cycle can run twice before anything is bonded down. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. A piece is never laid flat across a gap while it is moved, because that is how stone cracks unaided. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip.