Worktop installation in Chiswick

Yes. Chiswick is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Bay bookings are usually an hour or two, which is fine for unloading and no use at all as a place to leave the van for a day. 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. The first hand off the van is the one holding the clock. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Where the side return has been filled in, the old external wall is now an internal one and still carries its render, its gutter line and its old fixings. The day is planned backwards from the hall. The slow parts are slow for a reason. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

A front path with a gate and a turn or two adds handling before the door is even reached, and every handling movement is another chance to catch a corner. 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. Underground loading has a height restriction, and a van with an A-frame on it is taller than the driver remembers. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. 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. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence. 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. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens.

A window at one end and a doorway at the other means one end of the run is lit from behind and the other is interrupted, so the two ends of the same length behave differently. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. 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. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner.

An island often runs in one piece where a wall run cannot. Join count and position are settled from the template drawing rather than improvised on the fitting day. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. The two runs are rarely the same length, and the shorter one often carries the sink, which puts the cut-outs in the piece with the least material to spare. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. Suspended timber floors flex underfoot, and anything that moves beneath a unit shows up later as a lipped join. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Levelled under the units first.

Templating and fitting are two visits, not one, and the gap between them is when the stone is actually cut. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. Nothing changes hands until after the template. Chimney breasts and the alcoves either side of them break the run into short pieces before anyone has drawn a kitchen. Protection down, dry-lay, scribe, then bond: the order matters more in a difficult room than an easy one. The awkward piece goes in before the easy ones.

Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. A carpeted hall runs a trolley badly, so a heavy piece is carried rather than rolled from the threshold in. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts.