Worktop installation in Mayfair

Yes. Mayfair is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W1J, W1K, W1S. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. 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 clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Windows are low and wide with deep timber cills and leaded lights, so a run under one meets joinery rather than plaster. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork. Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw.

Once a long piece is in on the diagonal there is no room left for anyone else, so it travels up alone and is met on the landing above. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The last piece off the van is the first one fitted. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A slipped slot takes the next one with it. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Nothing is bonded until the whole run sits flat. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A rolling programme loses a flat to one missing key.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Ceilings are high enough that the wall units sit low against them, which leaves a tall band of wall above the worktop doing nothing. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. A settled floor adds an hour and the day allows for it.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A join added to get stone into the room is a different thing from a join added because the slab ran out, and the quote says which is which. 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. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Big rooms hide their falls, and the difference from one corner of a five metre floor to the other is measured in tens of millimetres. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. Door fronts and stone edges get checked against each other first.