Worktop installation in Smithfield

Yes. Smithfield is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC1A, EC1M. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. On a street with no restrictions the constraint is other residents rather than a warden, so it is worth putting a cone or a car out early. 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. Nothing needs visiting and nothing needs collecting: the template is in your kitchen and so is the fit.

Poured screed over steel decking can fall away across a long run, so level is checked across the whole room before anything is packed. These read as easy from the outside and rarely are. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. 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.

The lift has to be booked and blanketed before anything moves, and that booking needs to cover the old tops coming out as well as the new stone going in. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop fabrication first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. 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. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it.

An island is a single visible piece with four finished edges and no wall to hide against, so it is the piece the whole kitchen is judged on. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. One datum for every run in the room. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Where a column lands in the run the template plots its actual outline so the stone is cut to fit around it rather than stopped short and filled. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. Confirm loading bay access and lift booking with the building's management, and clear any furniture from the mezzanine stairs or split-level approach. Inventories record the condition of a kitchen at both ends of a tenancy, which is a practical argument for a surface that looks the same in its fifth year as its first. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked with whoever actually holds the keys.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Painted brick is flat nowhere, and raked-back mortar joints leave a line no straightedge agrees with. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Packers under the carcass, not shims under the stone.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A mitred join at a corner is a different job from a butt join along a run, and they are not priced the same. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. If the island is a few hundred millimetres longer than the usable length of a slab, a second slab gets bought to gain that overhang, and the whole slab is paid for rather than the part used. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The island is set against the perimeter, not a wall.

How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer.

Door frames and the stair route are protected too, since most contact happens on the way in. Every piece is dry-assembled on the bench before it is loaded, so a fabrication mistake is found in the workshop rather than in your kitchen. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Where the lift will not take the longest run we design a join in rather than gamble, because a piece that will not go up has to go back on the van. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.