Worktop installation in South Bank

Yes. South Bank is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE1. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floors are chipboard deck on timber joists, which moves enough that level is taken with the units loaded rather than empty. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. 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. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

A goods lift booked by the hour puts a clock on the whole delivery, so pieces go up in a planned order and nothing is handled twice. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around. Where the bay sits some distance from the core, the carry across the car park is the longest leg of the day and gets boarded and lit. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. Developer-fitted kitchens come with thin cam-lock carcasses, which are fine under laminate and want bracing before stone goes on them. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The prep list is not optional. Housings and integrated appliances are set out for a 38mm laminate top, so dropping to 20mm or 30mm stone changes the clearances and needs checking before anything is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Sealed before we leave.

Waterfall ends are cut in sequence off the length either side of the top so the vein carries down the leg, and that sequence is gone the moment a piece has to be recut. 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 runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. 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. Mixed ownership means the decision-maker is not always the person who lets us in, so it is worth being clear early about who signs the quote off. 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. The slot belongs to whoever can open the door.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. The lift is only part of the route, and the corridor from the lobby to the flat door often holds a tighter turn than the car does. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. It sets the crew: two fitters where the route is straightforward, four where it is not. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. A gated development controls when a van gets in, where it can stand and for how long, and none of that gets decided on the morning. 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. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

Socket and switch positions have to be final before templating, because the openings are machined rather than chopped out on the wall. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Estate roads are narrow with parking courts behind the blocks, so the carry crosses open ground rather than a pavement. The lift is measured before the piece is loaded, and once inside the flat the fitting is quick by comparison. Settlement is packed out, never levered out.