Worktop installation in Brimsdown

Yes. Brimsdown is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are EN3. It is worked on our north London run, along with the rest of Enfield. Off-street parking means the van stays put all day, so tools, packers and the offcut we would rather have than not are all within reach. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

Plaster in the older half is a sand and cement backing on brick while the newer half is board on dabs, so the same fixing bites in one wall and breaks through the other. 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. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them. A downstand over a run caps wall unit height before it caps anything else, and the splashback then takes its height from the steel rather than from the units. 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.

Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. 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. A drive that shelves towards the house needs the van chocked and the trolley controlled, since a loaded A-frame gathers speed quickly on a slope. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop replacement. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The building keeps working around us. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A slipped slot takes the next one with it.

Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The notch is eased until it drops, then bonded. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Where two people share the decision it helps to know early which of them is settling the edge profile and which is settling the budget, because it is rarely the same person for both. 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.

The lift, if there is one, is measured on the diagonal, because that is the dimension a long piece actually uses. An external stair, a side return or a rear garden counts as carry and is measured the same way. A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. 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.

On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. The old larder leaves behind a thick cold shelf and a vent brick through the outer wall, and both have to go before that wall reads flat. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Silicone finishes the job; it does not rescue it.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

The sink, tap and hob have to be physically in the room at the template, not merely ordered, because the cut-out is machined to the item itself. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. 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.