Worktop installation in Royal Victoria

Yes. Royal Victoria is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E16. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Newham. A market day closes the street to traffic for the morning and hands it back in the afternoon, which moves the visit rather than cancelling it. 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 parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

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. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

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. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after. A timed school street shuts the road either side of the school day, so the van goes in between those two windows or it does not go in. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The void ends whether we have finished or not.

The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. 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. 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. Access confirmed rather than assumed.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Developer carcasses are thin cam-lock chipboard, which is entirely adequate under laminate and wants bracing before stone. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Door fronts and stone edges get checked against each other first.

If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The fit follows 5 to 10 working days after the template, and nothing is cut before that visit because nothing is cut from a plan. Everything arrives through one controlled entrance with a booking sheet, and a delivery that misses its slot waits. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The whole run is dry-fitted before any adhesive is opened.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Managed buildings allow deliveries through the lift only between set hours, and a day that overruns them finishes with the last piece still on the pavement. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it.