Worktop installation in Monument

Yes. Monument is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC3R. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

The flats are stacked identically, so the kitchen above sits directly over this one and its waste passes through the same boxing. This is the most managed day we do. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Sealant seals. It does not fit.

Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary.

A mitred corner is cut and dressed as a matched pair, and if either leg shifts by a millimetre on site the joint opens along its whole length rather than at one end. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The awkward metre takes the longest. Have the works booking confirmed with the managing agent or porter in advance, with the lift slot and any parking permit or bay suspension in place. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Owner or agent, somebody has to be reachable.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. Permitted working hours, a porter and a booked lift set a hard finish time on the day whatever stage the fit has reached. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. The lift is a small passenger car with a gate, and the alternative is a stone stair winding round the shaft with a turn at every half-landing. The finish time is set by the block rather than by the work, so the sequence is planned to end early rather than to run late. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. Hoisting through a window is occasionally the answer, and it is a decision made at the template, not improvised on the fitting day. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is walked with a tape before the van is opened.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The prep list is not optional.