Worktop installation in Whitechapel

Yes. Whitechapel is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Tower Hamlets. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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. We would rather start at seven than argue with a warden. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Entry-phone access, a booked lift and a parking bay near the entrance all have to be arranged before a date is confirmed. The carry is the constraint. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints. 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. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

A lift out of service for the day turns a straightforward install into a stair carry, so the slot gets confirmed with whoever manages the building rather than against a calendar. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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 booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. New-build kitchens are usually smaller than the plan suggests once the appliances are in, so the usable run is shorter than the drawn run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Six flats, six days, one kitchen at a time. Buyers upgrading before handover work to a choices deadline set by the sales office rather than by the build programme. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The void ends whether we have finished or not.

On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The return is offered up last. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. A waterfall leg is a separate piece bonded to the top on a mitre, so the floor it stands on has to be level enough for that mitre to close along its full height. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Where a top takes wine, oil and lemon most days, the non-porous materials ask least of the household. The kitchen is a narrow room off the hall with the window at the far end, so the run is a galley by construction rather than by choice. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. It is the heaviest single piece in the kitchen, so the number of hands needed on the day and the route in are worked out from that piece rather than from the runs. 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. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side.