Worktop installation in Millbank

Yes. Millbank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW1P. It is run from the Watford side, covering Hertfordshire & North London. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing lights the worktop from one side all day, which shows every ripple in a polished surface and every gap at a scribe. 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. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted. Closing up a hatch leaves a patched wall that is never flush with the rest - template after the plastering, not before, or the upstand will not sit tight.

Purpose-built blocks with porters, a residents' lift and a separate service lift, and most managing agents restrict works to weekday daytime with no weekend noise. Millbank itself is a red route so vehicles use the block's own forecourt or a booked bay. A car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a three-metre worktop however it is stood, and there is no trimming it on the landing. 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. Tell us what the approach looks like when you book the template and it gets built into the day rather than discovered on it.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The prep list is not optional. Upgrading a builder-finish kitchen is mostly a swap, so the cost sits in the material choice rather than in the shape of the room. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One visit, done properly.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The join is the last thing finished. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first.