Worktop installation in St Paul's

Yes. St Paul's is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EC4M. It is worked on our City of London run, along with the rest of the Square Mile. Where the frontage is a clearway the unload happens away from the door and the carry gets longer, which is a crew and time question rather than a stone one. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Underfloor heating in the screed means nothing is fixed into the floor, so an island is anchored to the carcasses alone. 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. A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. 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.

A height barrier on the car park entrance rules out a tail-lift van outright, and the stone then transfers to a trolley at the barrier itself. 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. Loading exemptions on red routes are narrow, time-limited and heavily camera-enforced, so we plan around them rather than relying on them. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The van does not stay on a main road once it is empty.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop replacement first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. Damage in a let flat is settled as a deposit deduction, so a surface that can be repaired in place is worth more than one that has to be replaced whole. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. The person choosing the worktop is not the person using it, and that shifts the balance from appearance towards running cost. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The void ends whether we have finished or not.

A full-depth tall unit projects past the worktop line, and the run has to be scribed against its side panel instead of carrying on past it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Pieces are carried in the order they are laid. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. 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. 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. 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.

Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The return is offered up last.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. Taking the old tops off and disposing of them is its own line on the quote rather than something folded into the stone price. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. The realistic answer on a main road is an early slot, a spotter on the van and pieces staged in one movement rather than several trips. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. Time lost at the kerb never comes back later in the day.

Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.

An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Ceiling heights are held to the minimum the plan allows, so the panel between worktop and wall units is a short piece. 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.