Worktop installation in Shad Thames

Yes. Shad Thames is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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. A booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Many of these kitchens are a fitted pod dropped into open floor, so three sides are free and only the fourth is ever scribed. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are. Carried once, and carried properly. A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.

Goods lifts and passenger lifts fail differently: one has a rated load that matters, the other has a door aperture that matters more. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects 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. The clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not.

It is one of the three that come up most, though worktop fabrication comes up more. Nothing changes between them: same template, same workshop, same installers. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The last trade in inherits every delay before it.

Two runs of similar length nest as a pair off one slab, and if one of them grows by a few hundred millimetres the pair stops fitting and the yield changes for both. 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. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. Confirm loading bay access and lift booking with the building's management, and clear any furniture from the mezzanine stairs or split-level approach. Work between tenancies runs against a fixed date rather than a preference, and stone has a lead time that has to fit inside that window with a few days spare. 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.

If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Handrails, mirrors and a sloping ceiling panel all eat into the usable diagonal, and none of them appear on a lift specification sheet. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. Original brickwork is uneven by ten millimetres or more across a bay, so the back edge is scribed to the actual face rather than to a line. The goods lift is often industrial and generous, but the flat entrance and any internal turn into a mezzanine or split level can be tighter than anything in the building, so we walk the full route with a tape before unloading. Old floors get packed, not argued with.

Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. The design and quotation visit is free and carries no obligation, so a figure exists before any commitment. Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn.