Worktop installation in Coombe (Croydon)

Yes. Coombe (Croydon) is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR0. It is worked on our south London run, along with the rest of Croydon. Having the van on the drive means the load can be staged, so the heavy pieces come off last and go straight in instead of standing outside. 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. A spotter on the van is a man off the tools. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Houses on modern estates are built to a handful of standard plans, so the kitchen is square, predictable and modest in area. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. The units are shimmed to one datum before stone touches them. An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The scribe is cut on site or it is not cut.

The barrier, the entry code and the estate rules decide when a van can get near the door, and none of that is negotiable on the day. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts. A dropped kerb wide enough for a car is not always wide enough for a long-wheelbase van, and the width of the crossing decides the rest. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop fabrication. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. A specification repeated across several plots has to be repeatable, which quietly rules out the natural stones where no two slabs match. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The last trade in inherits every delay before it. Replacing one plot years after handover is the problem nobody plans for, because a quartz colour can be reordered and a granite block cannot. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A date agreed in spring is a hope by autumn.

Knee room under a breakfast bar is measured from the face of the cabinets rather than from the edge of the stone, so a deep apron quietly eats the depth somebody actually gets to sit in. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Packing goes under the units, not under the stone. The stone is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately.

Stud centres are almost never where the brackets would like to be, so fixing positions get set from the framing and the stone is designed to suit. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. Two flats with an identical layout can want entirely different things from the same run of worktop, which is why the quote follows the run rather than the address. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A locked door costs the day, not an hour.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. A long top on units that were shimmed once and never checked is the commonest version of this, and it is cheap to fix beforehand. Units have to be fixed down as well as levelled. A loose carcass moves under stone. A partition that gives when you lean on it will give under someone sitting at an overhang, and a bonded mitre nearby is where that movement shows first. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. A forced back edge cracks weeks later.

Take the old tops off yourself if you would rather, and the quote simply carries one line fewer. On a replacement the old top comes off in the morning and the new stone is down and sealed the same day. Tiling bonded to the wall behind usually comes away with the old top, so that wall is agreed beforehand. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. Timber-frame construction with plasterboard linings means every fixing has to find a stud, and a peninsula end needs proper support built in beforehand. The lift is measured before the piece is loaded, and once inside the flat the fitting is quick by comparison. Fixings go into what the wall actually is.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. These houses are three storeys on a small footprint, so the kitchen is on the ground floor and everything else is stacked above it. Communal areas are protected from the entrance to the flat door, because the building notices a mark long before the client does. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork.