Worktop installation in Westbourne Park

Yes. Westbourne Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W2, W9. It is worked on our central London run, along with the rest of Westminster. A skip, a delivery lorry or a run of scaffolding takes the frontage the van needed, so the street is worth a look the day before rather than on the morning. 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. A drive and a red route make two different fitting days. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Floors are the original joists with a later acoustic layer laid over them, and that layer is not flat where it meets the doorways. 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. Carried once, and carried properly. Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

The step and the gap at the car threshold catch a trolley wheel, so the piece comes off the trolley and goes in by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection goes down along it first. Where parking runs down both sides the road is left as a single lane, and a van standing in it has to be somewhere it does not stop a bin lorry. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock.

It is on the short list of three for this patch, with worktop replacement first. Same template, same workshop, same fitters whichever it is. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract.

A galley puts the sink on one side and the hob on the other, which spreads the cut-outs across two pieces instead of weakening one. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Level has to hold across the whole room rather than along one wall, or a floor that falls end to end shows as a step where two pieces meet. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone. 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. Flats bought out of managed stock keep the original kitchen dimensions long after the ownership changed, so the layout says very little about who is paying for the work. 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 whole slot, or the stone waits.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The alternative stands on the surface, so the choice is losing worktop permanently or only while you are draining. The back addition is frequently a single skin of brick rendered on both faces, which takes a fixing badly and moves with the weather. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Dust extraction indoors, or the cut happens outside.

Old laminate is light and awkward rather than heavy, so it is usually the easier half of the day. 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. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Templating, fabrication and fitting are the same three lines whether the stone came from us or from you. How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. That family has lived on a building site long enough.

A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Slabs come in finite sizes, so a long run needs a join whatever the room looks like. The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass.