Kitchen worktops in Strand

Yes. Barely any family housing - the stone work here is tea points, staff kitchens and small serviced apartment kitchenettes in office and hotel buildings. Standard job is a 2m to 3m counter with an undermount bowl, a boiling tap cut-out and a matching upstand, repeated across several floors. 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. 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 day is built around that window.

Victorian commercial block, Edwardian chambers and hotel and office building. Wider halls make the carry noticeably easier, and that alone can remove a join that a narrower terrace would have forced into the run. The day is planned backwards from the hall. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.

Red route with no stopping along the Strand itself and constant event and works closures around Aldwych and Trafalgar Square. Access is via a basement loading bay with a height restriction, a booked goods lift, and building security requiring method statements in advance. Lift doors close on a timer that takes no account of somebody holding a worktop, so a pair of hands stays on the buttons at each end. So the nesting is worked to the measured route first and to the slab second. Crates are sized to clear the same openings the stone does.

Worktop fabrication and worktop installation, in that order. 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. So the nesting is planned around it rather than around a standard kitchen. One drawing set, every unit. Repeat tea points across floors look identical on the drawing but never are - template each floor separately, the risers and boxings move.

Walls at both ends mean two scribes on every piece, and a run that has to drop between two fixed points has no tolerance left to give away. 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 island is set against the perimeter, not a wall. A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The template drawing carries the real geometry through to the saw, and the piece is machined to it rather than trimmed to it later. The radius goes in at the bench, not on site. Material is quoted supply only from £110 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are given their own lines rather than one combined figure.

Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. The workshop works from the approved drawing, so whoever signs it off is signing off the join positions too. Whoever holds the budget sees the drawing first. Tell us what the building is when you book, and the lift, the stair turn and any freeholder notice are planned in rather than discovered.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A car will often hold more than its doors will admit, and it is the clear width between the door edges that a piece actually has to pass through. Getting that wrong leaves a finished, machined piece that cannot reach the room, which is a remake rather than a trim. Load order is set by the order the pieces will be carried.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. 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 units are untouched. Only the top of them changes. 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. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. We would rather ask than guess.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Half-landings mean the back of the house sits at a slightly different level from the front, and a knocked-through kitchen crosses that line. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. Settlement is packed out, never levered out.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. Chimney breasts and the alcoves either side of them break the run into short pieces before anyone has drawn a kitchen. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. One visit, our own installers.