Worktop installation in Addiscombe

Yes. Addiscombe is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. 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. The kerb decides the start time. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The rear door swings inward across the end of the run, so the last few hundred millimetres of worktop are only reachable with the door shut. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected. A window board sitting below finished worktop height leaves two choices, drop the top under it or notch the stone around it, and both cost more than a straight run. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. It is the slow part of the day and it should be.

A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. That is what the morning is planned around. A suspension only works if the cones and the notice are actually there on the morning, and now and then a car is sitting in the bay regardless. 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. Van to door is the distance that matters.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary.

Bi-fold or sliding doors at the end of the return mean the run finishes against a frame rather than a wall, and a frame gives nothing to scribe into and no movement to take up. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A cill projecting forward of the plaster line pushes the back edge out, and the units then stand off the wall by that amount for the whole length. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Offered up twice, bonded once. 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. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A rolling programme loses a flat to one missing key.

The bowl position has to be settled before templating, since the grooves are set out from it. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The room is swept and the offcuts leave with us.

The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Every internal doorway on the way through is another frame to clear, and internal doors come off their hinges rather than being propped open. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The same firm templates and fits. Nobody else is brought in to install. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. 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. Packers under the carcass, not shims under the stone.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. A pendant light hanging in the middle of a hall ceiling sets the angle a piece can be tilted to, and it is the measurement nobody thinks to take. 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.