Worktop installation in Campden Hill

Yes. Campden Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W8. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Kensington and Chelsea. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. 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.

Georgian houses put the kitchen in a basement or a rear closet wing, and the stairs down to it are the tightest part of the whole route. The day is planned backwards from the hall, and the scribing takes longer than the carry. That is the shape of the day. Tall narrow houses with winder stairs - if the piece will not make the winder, it comes in through the front lightwell grating opening or it does not come in at all.

The gradient is the issue: the streets rise sharply, kerbs are high and a loaded trolley wants to run away from you downhill, so slabs get walked rather than wheeled. Many houses have narrow original front doors with fanlights that cannot be removed and internal stairs with a winder at the basement flight. Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. None of it is worked out on the doorstep.

It is one of the three we do most here, behind worktop templating. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. Rear and side-return extensions are where the islands appear, and an island is the piece that decides whether one slab does the kitchen or two. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. One visit, done properly. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Sealed before we leave.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. 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. A street with houses in single occupation next to the same houses cut into flats produces two completely different jobs from the same elevation. 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. Access for the whole slot, or a different day.