Worktop installation in Gloucester Road

Yes. Gloucester Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW7. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects 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. The day is built around that window. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These kitchens are full of boxed soil stacks, gas risers and heating pipework, and the boxing usually stops short of the ceiling. This is the most managed day we do. That is the shape of the day. Old service lifts are the hard limit on this street - if the car will not take it, the joint gets designed around the lift, not around the kitchen.

Blocks here have a front porter's desk and a separate tradesman's entrance round the side, and materials go in the service lift only, with protective blankets on the walls. The lifts are old, often around 1000mm by 1300mm internally with a low car ceiling, which caps a stood-on-edge slab at roughly 2.2-2.4m unless the stairs are used instead. Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. One visit, done properly.

An L can be mitred at the corner for a continuous look or butt-jointed over the gable, and the two are different money and different risk. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Dry-lay first, always. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. Have the works booking confirmed with the managing agent or porter in advance, with the lift slot and any parking permit or bay suspension in place. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first.