Worktop installation in Shepherd's Bush

Yes. Shepherd's Bush is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W12. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. 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. 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Kitchens in the upper flats often sit in the return wing at half-landing level, so there are three or four steps inside the flat before the room is reached at all. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The age of the house sets the pace of it. 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. 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.

Sintered stone at 12mm changes what a staircase can take, because the same run arrives at roughly half the weight of the granite equivalent. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Suction pads go on once the face is clean and dry, not before. 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. 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 parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Where kitchens turn over between tenancies the priority is a surface that survives a decade of being treated as a chopping board. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time. Landlord work is scheduled around void periods, so the whole thing is a fixed window and the template date matters as much as the fitting date. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The building keeps working around us.

Two parallel runs with a walkway between them is the most efficient shape there is on a slab, because both pieces nest as straight lengths with almost no waste. 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.

A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. 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. A let property is specified for durability and for a fixed window, and both of those are legitimate reasons to choose differently. 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.

The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. Chimney breasts are often taken out at ground level and left standing above, so the middle of the run is newer wall than the two ends of it. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. 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. An under-stairs cupboard eats one end of most of these kitchens, and the run stops at a door that has to keep opening. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. A piece carried on edge up a flight has to clear the ceiling above the stairs as well as the walls either side of it. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Nothing is carried past an obstruction that could have been moved.

Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. The partitions put in at conversion are studwork standing on the old floor, so they take a fixing well but carry nothing, and a heavy end panel needs a different answer. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.