Worktop installation in Clapham

Yes. Clapham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SW4. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Lambeth. 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. 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 carry length sets the number of hands on the job. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The external wall on the passage side has never been rendered, so it is cold, solid and honest to fix into. The day is planned backwards from the hall. Settlement is packed out, never levered out. Once the carcasses are levelled the gap under the plinth varies along the run, and that varying gap is the honest record of what the floor is doing. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

Stone goes up on edge, and it is the half-landing turn rather than the flight itself that sets the maximum piece. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands. Some zones are controlled for a short window in the middle of the day and open either side of it, which makes the timing of the visit the whole question. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Plot after plot, the same fitting sequence. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens.

A run that stops in mid-air at the open end needs a finished end rather than a cut one, and that end takes the same edge work as the whole front. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

A wall line that runs level over a floor that does not means the finish closes up on the plinth at one end, which is joinery rather than something the stone can answer. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment. 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 owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. 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. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. The tap hole is drilled in the workshop too, and its position depends on how far the tap has to swing. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. Where a run finishes hard against a wall the last few millimetres are scribed, and where it finishes in open floor it is cut square and polished, which is two different jobs on one length. 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 galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together.

Between the template and the fit the slab is nested, cut, mitred and dry-assembled on the bench, which is work you never see and is most of the wait. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. The original front door is narrow and the hall is often the only way in, which puts a ceiling on the longest single piece. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Levelled under the units first.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads.

Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. If it is a decision for later, say so at the template: the match is a question about the batch. The larder under the stairs is usually still there and still opens into the kitchen, so the run stops at a door that cannot be moved. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. A dry-lined wall hides a void, and the void gets bridged.