Worktop installation in Harrow Road

Yes. Harrow Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W9, W10. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. 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. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

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. The slow parts are slow for a reason. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun.

Pieces get staged in the ground floor lobby and sent up singly, which needs somewhere to stand them where nobody will walk into them. 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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. Four kitchens ordered together take one template visit and one delivery, and that is where the saving comes from rather than from a discount on the stone. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Sealed before we leave. Rooms in a shared house are let individually, so the work has to be done around whoever is still living in the building. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Scheme rules on working hours are checked first.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. A join is glued and clamped flush on the day, so it is fixed rather than something to be undone. An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The join is the last thing finished.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Support first, stone second.

A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. The internal stair is usually a straight flight with a tight top landing, and it is the landing rather than the flight that is the limit. Fixings into concrete go in with proper anchors, and the dust is contained rather than swept up afterwards. The house sets the order of work.