Worktop installation in Regent's Park

Yes. Regent's Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are NW1. It is worked on our central and north London run, along with the rest of Camden. 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. 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. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Listing and conservation conditions apply to a good number of these, which constrains what can be altered around the kitchen rather than what goes on top of the units. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Old floors get packed, not argued with. Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.

Suction lifters earn their keep on a straight flight and become a liability on a winder, where a handle standing out from the face is one more thing to catch on a wall. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Four hands or eight is settled before the tail lift drops. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The building keeps working around us. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A slipped slot takes the next one with it.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. 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. Booked with whoever actually holds the keys.

On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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.

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. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Injected damp courses and re-rendered lower walls leave the bottom metre standing proud of everything above it. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Nothing is cut in the room if the shop could do it.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Where the walls have been dry-lined over the old lath there is a void behind the board and no solid fixing until a batten is found. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Timber nosings chip under a slipped edge, so the treads are covered along the whole flight rather than only at the landings. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before.