Worktop installation in Millwall

Yes. Millwall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

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. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it. A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads.

Where the turn inside is tight the piece gets turned on the path and brought in already on edge, which needs room in front of the door as well as behind it. 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. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same 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. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract. 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. That family has lived on a building site long enough.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. 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. 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. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. 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. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. 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. The shell has the last word on fitting day.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Everything comes through the front door and down the hall, so the tightest point on the route is usually the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it.