Worktop installation in Euston

Yes. Euston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW1. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. 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. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

These blocks have been through at least one refurbishment programme, so the kitchen is a modern unit fit inside an old shell. The carry is the constraint. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork. 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. 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.

Where the stairwell is narrow enough that the stone travels on edge the polished face runs within an inch of the plaster, so the walls get boarded as well as the steps. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

One of the three we are asked for most, although worktop replacement is asked for more. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens.

The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. 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. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Communal floors are protected the same as private ones.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A galley that is also the route to the back door is a corridor first and a kitchen second, and what the shape can take is set by the traffic going through it. 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.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. Both are templated after the worktop is down and settled, because they are cut to the wall itself. The communal stair is concrete with a metal handrail and a solid half-landing wall, so there is nothing to take off to gain a few millimetres. The stairwell half-landing is usually the tightest point on the whole route and it dictates the maximum piece. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The design and quotation visit comes first. It is free and carries no obligation. These kitchens give three metres of usable wall and no more, so a dimension out by a few millimetres costs a whole run rather than a piece. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Door fronts and stone edges get checked against each other first.

Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract.