Worktop installation in Queenhithe

Yes. Queenhithe is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4V, EC4R. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. 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. 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 clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

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. 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. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary. 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. The prep list is not optional.

Peninsula tops are often the longest single piece in the kitchen, so if anything in the layout is going to force a second slab it is generally this one. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Clamps close the joint, colour match settles it. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Offered up twice, bonded once. 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 staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. 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. Booked with whoever actually holds the keys.

A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Standing a three-metre length on end takes more headroom outside the car than inside it, and a low lobby ceiling is what actually stops 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 agreed before the crew is booked, not after.

The carcasses stay put. Only the surface changes. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. The parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Quartz carries resin, so a hot pan wants a trivet, while granite and sintered stone will take one without complaint. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. 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. The lift is measured before the piece is loaded, and once inside the flat the fitting is quick by comparison. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A peninsula is an island with one end tied to a run, which means the join between them has to be planned rather than allowed to happen. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down.