Worktop installation in Paddington

Yes. Paddington is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W2. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, 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. The building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it. Where a peninsula returns into a stud wall the load has to sit on the units, with the wall doing no more than steadying it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

Where the parking court sits behind the block the carry crosses open ground and gets boarded, because loaded trolleys and block paving do not agree. 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. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers 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 missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one. 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. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day.

A peninsula projects into circulation space, so its outer corners usually take a radius rather than a point, and that radius is agreed at template rather than assumed. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

A lightweight stud partition will not carry a breakfast bar or a peninsula end, and stone finds that out faster than laminate ever did. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all. 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. The same building type can arrive as a careful one-off kitchen or as a fast turnaround, and the honest answer is that they are priced differently. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Protection goes down first.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Dot-and-dab plasterboard sounds solid and is hollow behind, so anything fixed through it has to hit a dab or a batten rather than a void. 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 alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

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 bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Underfloor heating in the screed means nothing is fixed into the floor, so an island is anchored to the carcasses alone. 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. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. A groove set needs a clear stretch of worktop beside the bowl, so it competes with the run for length instead of being free surface. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Overhangs get brackets before anyone leans on them.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary.