Worktop installation in Between the Commons

Yes. Between the Commons is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW11. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Wandsworth. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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 ask than guess. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Many of these had a bathroom or a WC built onto the far end of the addition, so the room now ends at a stud wall rather than at the original brickwork. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The tops go on level even when nothing else is. Casement handles and stays swing down into the space above the worktop, so the clearance that counts is the one measured with the window open. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Offered up twice, bonded once.

Where the hall runs straight through to the back the piece can be walked in flat, and it is only the two door frames that have to be cleared. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. None of it is worked out on the doorstep. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The kerb decides the start time.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Sealed before we leave. 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. 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.

A pop-up socket in the surface is one more cut-out through the full thickness, and it wants the same clear space beneath it that a sink does. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Sealant seals. It does not fit. 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. 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. Protection goes down first.

An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. Van to door is the distance that matters.

Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Quartz and sintered stone never need sealing: quartz is non-porous and sintered stone has effectively zero porosity. The only window is in the side wall facing into the side return, so the room reads darker than its size and the worktop is doing much of the reflecting. Pieces are stood on edge for the turns and carried flat for the straights, and that sequence is agreed before anything comes off the van. What the building will take decides how it is fixed.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Sash windows sit low in the rear wall, and the sill often lands below the height a worktop wants to run past. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. One visit, our own installers.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Turning a heavy piece on edge indoors needs floor space at both ends of the turn, so the hall is cleared of furniture before anything comes off the van. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The crew size follows from it.