Worktop installation in Imperial Wharf

Yes. Imperial Wharf is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. Where the van stands sets how the day runs. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Sprinkler heads and extract ducts are coordinated into the ceiling, so an extractor over an island goes where the services already allow. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them. 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. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. 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. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. 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.

Both runs are in view at the same time, so the two pieces are taken off the same area of slab and the veining is set to run the same way on each side. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The join is the last thing finished. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

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. Eased in, never forced. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One person is responsible for the door that morning.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Support first, stone second.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. 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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The laying order follows the shape.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. A riverside block is a managed building with a booked goods lift, a loading bay and a concierge, and all three have to line up on the same day. The lift is measured before the piece is loaded, and once inside the flat the fitting is quick by comparison. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.