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. Without a bay the van ends up on a single yellow with a crew member watching it, which takes a pair of hands off the carry. 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. We would rather ask than guess. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The back addition is a narrow two-storey outrigger with a single external wall, and the kitchen galley runs the length of it. The day is planned backwards from the hall. That is the shape of the day. Get in while the extension is still a building site and take the stone through the open rear wall - once the bifolds are glazed you are back to fighting the hallway.

Quiet residential streets with CPZ permit bays and reasonable width, so a van can usually get within 20m, but almost every house has a front path with two or three steps and a tiled Victorian threshold you do not want to chip. Where an extension is still under construction the back garden route via a neighbour or a side gate is often open and is far better than the hall. 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. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop design & quotation. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Where an annexe has been built or converted, its floor and its walls are newer than the main house and behave differently under the same run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. Extended households run kitchens hard, and that pushes the specification towards granite or sintered stone rather than a light quartz. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The prep list is not optional.

On a heavily veined stone the island and the run behind it are nested off the same area of slab so the movement relates across the room. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Eased in, never forced. 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. The householder is normally on site at template, and that is the right time to settle sink position, tap centres and overhang rather than agree them by email. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. Protection goes down first.