Worktop installation in Covent Garden

Yes. Covent Garden is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are WC2. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

Carrying down a flight is not the easier direction, because the weight runs ahead of the crew and whoever is at the bottom has no way of stopping a slip. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip. 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. 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. A crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A locked door costs the day, not an hour.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Levelled under the units first.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job.

Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. 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 back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. 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 last piece in has the least tolerance left.