Worktop installation in Brook Green

Yes. Brook Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W6, W14. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hammersmith and Fulham. Applying for a suspension means naming a length of kerb and a date, and moving the date generally means applying for it again. 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. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The rear door swings inward across the end of the run, so the last few hundred millimetres of worktop are only reachable with the door shut. 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. The age of the house sets the pace of it. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward metre takes the longest.

Boxed-in pipework running along the skirting looks harmless until a loaded trolley has to pass it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The crew size follows from it. A suspension is charged by the bay and by the day, so the number of metres asked for is worth getting right the first time. 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.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop fabrication. Whichever it is, the template and the fitters do not change. Where several adults share the cooking the kitchen is in use most of the day, so a fitting slot has to be agreed with more people than usual. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. Households sharing a house tend to want two prep areas rather than one, which usually means an island as well as a perimeter run. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one.

Sockets set into the end panel keep the top clear, but they sit below the stone and are cut into the panel by the fitter rather than machined into the worktop. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Levels are checked across the walkway, not along one side. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut. 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 someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Communal floors are protected the same as private ones.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. Where the staircase comes down into the hall the bottom treads project into the width, and nothing about that can be moved for the day. 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.

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 Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. 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. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A seam under a rooflight gets the extra minutes.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Ground floors fall away towards the garden across the whole footprint, so the units are packed up long before anything is measured for stone. 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.

Dark and heavily veined stone shows a join more than a pale even one, which is worth knowing before the slab is picked. There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. Veining carries through a join where both pieces come off the same slab, which is decided at nesting. On a book-matched pair the halves are laid out so the mirror line runs down the length of the piece, and once that line is set the top cannot be turned round to suit anything else. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass.