Worktop installation in Bell Green

Yes. Bell Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE26, SE6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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 crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The scullery floor was quarry tile bedded on concrete and it is often still under a laminate, sitting lower than the boards in the room it now joins. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. Carried once, and carried properly. Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded.

Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame. 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. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time.

One leg of an L is nearly always the working run and the other little more than a landing space, but both are templated, cut and edged to the same standard. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The join is the last thing finished. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. A quartz sample left on the counter for a week under the actual kitchen lights settles more arguments than any showroom, and an owner is the only person in a position to do that. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Notice periods decide the date more often than the workshop.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. Old tops are screwed or glued from underneath, so the drawer boxes come out before the worktop does. 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. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. If a piece cannot be got in at all, we say so at the template rather than on the day. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. Rear extensions on these sit on shallow foundations, and the crack at the junction with the original wall tells you which way it has moved. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The last piece down is the one nearest the door.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. The classic arrangement is the original back room with a later extension bolted onto it, so the kitchen is two ages of building in one room. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. Old floors get packed, not argued with.