Worktop installation in Avery Hill

Yes. Avery Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE9. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Greenwich. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Ceiling heights are low and the window head sits close to the ceiling, so the band of wall above the worktop is short. 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. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints. A stack boxed diagonally across a corner leaves a triangle of dead space, and the top is cut to that triangle rather than to a square return. 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.

The tail lift is still the pinch point, because the piece has to be walked off it onto the trolley while it is sitting at chest height. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it. Where the front garden has been paved over completely the van stands close to the house, and the route in is still a standard front door. 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 crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Quartz suits let property well: no sealing, no annual maintenance, and nothing an incoming tenant has to be told to look after. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone. Stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and the templating, the fabrication and the fitting each carry their own line.

Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A day out of use, told to whoever lives there.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. What moves the figure after templating is a change you make: a different edge, an extra cut-out, a bigger sink chosen late. 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. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

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. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. A front drive is the best thing that can happen to a fitting day, because the tail lift comes down within a few metres of the door and nothing is on a clock. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A seal is not waterproofing. It only buys time to wipe a spill up. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. These blocks have been through at least one refurbishment programme, so the kitchen is a modern unit fit inside an old shell. The stairwell half-landing is usually the tightest point on the whole route and it dictates the maximum piece. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected.

Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. The communal stair is concrete with a metal handrail and a solid half-landing wall, so there is nothing to take off to gain a few millimetres. Fixings into concrete go in with proper anchors, and the dust is contained rather than swept up afterwards. The tops go on level even when nothing else is.