Worktop installation in Golden Lane

Yes. Golden Lane is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1Y. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Template and fit both happen at the property, so there is nothing to drive to and nothing to collect.

Deck access means a long open walkway from the lift or the stair to the front door, and that walk happens with the piece on edge in whatever weather there is. The carry is the constraint. The age of the house sets the pace of it. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. 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.

A lift out of service for the day turns a straightforward install into a stair carry, so the slot gets confirmed with whoever manages the building rather than against a calendar. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. We would rather ask than guess.

Honestly, no, though it would be easy to claim otherwise. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That says something about the housing round here, not about the work. Quote, cut and fit are the same here as on any other part of the patch. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. 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.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Access is checked against the longest piece first. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The whole slot, or the stone waits.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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 seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A maisonette puts the kitchen on one of two levels, so an internal staircase may be part of the route as well as the communal one. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. Car depth is the number that settles it wherever a piece cannot be stood upright, and most residential cars are shallower than the run they are serving. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame.

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. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. Where the aisle is too tight the usual answer is a reduced-depth top on one side, and a 500mm run is a different cut, a different sink and a different drainer to a 600mm one. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always.