Worktop installation in Old Kent Road

Yes. Old Kent Road is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1, SE15. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. 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. We would rather start at seven than argue with a warden. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Handover kitchens are fitted with the cheapest carcass the specification allowed, and cam-lock chipboard boxes are what a stone top has to sit on. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Sealant seals. It does not fit.

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. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. A booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop replacement first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one.

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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. One datum for every run in the room. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The awkward metre takes the longest. 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. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. 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. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall.

A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. The room is square, the walls are plumb and the floor is flat, so almost every complication in the job belongs to the building rather than the kitchen. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. Material is quoted supply only and templating, fabrication and fitting sit on their own lines, so it is visible which part is stone and which is labour. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.