Worktop installation in Cubitt Town

Yes. Cubitt Town 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. Gravel and block paving both look like hard standing and neither takes a loaded trolley, so the run from tail lift to door gets boarded. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

A balcony door is the only other opening in the flat and it leads nowhere useful, so everything comes in through the front door. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. Levelled first, then set, then sealed. A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

The front door is often the cheapest hundred millimetres on the route, because a door lifted off its hinges gives back the width its own thickness was taking. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts. A shared drive is only useful if the neighbour is not the one parked behind the van, so we ask which side the standing belongs to before the date is set. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer.

If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Clamps close the joint, colour match settles it. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A forced back edge cracks weeks later. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it.

The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. 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. A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again.

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. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Underfloor heating in a screed rules out fixing into the floor and rules out standing anything heavy on a single point. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.