Worktop installation in Clayhall

Yes. Clayhall is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG5. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. A step up from the drive to the threshold turns the last two metres into a lift, and a lift is where two pairs of hands become the minimum. 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. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

The incoming main and the stopcock come up through the floor at the old scullery wall, so whatever unit stands over them has to stay removable. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. The tops go on level even when nothing else is. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

The side passage is the measurement that matters, because a piece has to be carried flat down it and then turned in at the back door, and the turn is always tighter than the passage. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Someone stays on the trailing end the whole way in. Where the van cannot turn on the plot it has to arrive already facing the right way, so the approach along the street is part of the plan. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop fabrication. Same template visit, same benches, 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. The void ends whether we have finished or not. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Overhangs are measured off the finished carcass. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Because the money comes out of a household rather than a maintenance budget, phasing is common: tops now, island or splashbacks later, quoted so the second visit still matches the first. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One visit where permission only stretches to one.

A piece with a bowl and a hob cut into it is the fragile one, and it is handled accordingly. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. 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. It is walked round rather than looked at from one side, so the direction the veining runs along it cannot be hidden against a wall the way it can on a perimeter run. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone.

Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Remnants bought elsewhere are the awkward case, because the drawing is then made to fit the stone. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it.

Variation past what packing can take up has to be corrected in the carcasses before we cut, because the template records the units as they stand. The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. A run can measure dead right at both ends and still belly out in the middle, which only appears once the template plots the intermediate points. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. The rear wall now carries french or folding doors across most of its width, so a whole side of the room opens and a long piece comes straight in off the garden. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. What the building will take decides how it is fixed.