Worktop installation in Botany Bay

Yes. Botany Bay is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN2. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Enfield. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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 parking dictates the sequence, not the kitchen. Your part of it happens entirely at home, with nothing to travel to and nothing to bring back.

Lime plaster over rubble moves in and out enough that a single long panel will show a gap somewhere along its length. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. Old floors get packed, not argued with. The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again.

Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The crew size follows from it. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. Where there is no space, the plan starts the night before.

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. Consecutive days, one kitchen at a time. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. The building keeps working around us.

A galley closed at one end takes a short return across the top, and that little piece carries the same edge work, the same handling and nearly the same cost as a full length. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The managing agent books the lift, not the household.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. A remade piece is cut from the same slab run wherever the slab allows, because a replacement from another batch will not match across a join. Carrying through the house means protecting the whole route first: floor boarded, banister padded, and the front door held open on a wedge rather than by hand. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Protection goes down along it first.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. A range or an Aga in an original recess is usually immovable, so the run is designed around it and the clearances come from the appliance. The carry from where the van can stand to the door is boarded wherever it crosses gravel, grass or a stone floor. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them.

They read strongly across a dark stone and are nearly invisible on a pale one, so look before deciding. Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Long perimeter runs and an island mean level has to hold across the whole room rather than along any one wall. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. A bad floor is corrected under the carcass, never with sealant.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. The quote is written from the template drawing. Before that it works from what you have described. The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall.