Worktop installation in Elephant and Castle

Yes. Elephant and Castle is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1, SE17. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. 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 work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Flats are handed in pairs about the stair core, so half the kitchens in the block are the mirror image of the other half. The carry is the constraint. The house sets the order of work. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Boards go down wherever a loaded trolley has to run. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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 sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The last trade in inherits every delay before 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn.

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. The last piece in has the least tolerance left. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. Managed stock usually comes with its own rules about working hours, waste, and who is allowed on site. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The room cleared before the crew arrives.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Access is checked against the longest piece first.

The template can be taken with the old top still down, which is why one visit covers both. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. A drying balcony opened off the kitchen originally and many have since been glazed in, which turns an external wall into an internal one with the old threshold still in it. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. Levelled first, then set, then sealed.