Worktop installation in Brockley

Yes. Brockley is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE4. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Enforcement zones rarely accept a trade van unloading stone as an exemption, so this gets sorted before the date is confirmed rather than argued about afterwards. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is. The measuring and the fitting are both done at the property, so there is nothing to visit or collect.

The rear room is generous with a chimney breast in one corner, so the run gains a return and two scribed ends whatever the plan drew. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for. Where two pieces meet over a fall in the floor the join has to be flush to the hand as well as true to the level, because the eye reads the join and forgives the room. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

Where a basement car park is the only way up from the parking level the carry starts below ground, and two lifts in one building rarely share the same internal dimensions. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Four hands or eight is settled before the tail lift drops. Visitor permits are issued to the household rather than to the trade, so the ones the day needs come from the customer and are best in hand the week before. 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. A crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication and worktop replacement. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. One kitchen out of use, never the whole house.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

Floors settle, and once base units are packed and levelled properly the stone sits true while everything else in the room admits it is not. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone. 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. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Access confirmed rather than assumed.

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 units below stay exactly as they are; only the surface is replaced. A bay suspension carries a fee and a notice period, and the notice period is the part that catches people out when a date moves. 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.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. 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. The route is walked before the first lift.

What is quoted is what the drawing says, and the figure does not move unless the drawing does. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence.