Worktop installation in Brentham Garden Suburb

Yes. Brentham Garden Suburb is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W5. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. 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. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

Floors are suspended timber over a shallow void and have moved, so the units are packed and levelled before anything is set on them. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. Movement joints in the shell stay movement joints. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every re-grip is a chance to chip a piece, so they are planned out. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop splashbacks & upstands. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The building keeps working around us. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A slipped slot takes the next one with it.

Where the sink and the hob face each other across the aisle, everything carried between them crosses the walkway, and that is the one movement the shape cannot design out. 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. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Where a corner is a couple of degrees off, a mitre cut to a theoretical ninety degrees opens on the wall side and there is no closing it afterwards. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The awkward corner goes in first, not last. 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. Where ownership is split across a building, the common parts belong to someone else and the carry route is negotiated rather than assumed. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access confirmed rather than assumed.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The kitchen normally sits in the back addition or a later side return, which puts the run against the oldest and least straight wall in the building. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. The route is walked before the first lift.

Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

Where there is a lift, whether it can be booked out and padded matters as much as its size. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in.

Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The step between rooms is packed out first.