Worktop installation in Cranham

Yes. Cranham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM14. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. 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. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

Ceiling heights dropped after the war, so there is less wall between the worktop and the wall units than in anything older. Access is generally through the front door and a short straight hall into the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than a Victorian terrace, though rear access through a back garden or shared path is often the better route if it exists. The age of the house sets the pace of it. A junction between an original floor and a later extension slab is almost never at the same level, so units carrying a run across it need packing first. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A carry that needs six hands gets six hands. A visitor or a neighbour parked on the drive is a five-minute problem at eight in the morning and an hour-long one at eleven. 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.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Tenants are still in the building, so the stairs stay clear. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it.

The short run at the head of a U usually sits under a window, so that piece is scribed on three sides at once and has nowhere left to be pushed back to. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Clamps close the joint, colour match settles it. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

Legs bottoming out on hard concrete or an uneven screed mean the tops of the carcasses are not one plane, and that is picked up at template rather than on fitting day. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. Unlock any rear or shared path gate and clear both the hall and the back approach so we can choose the better route on the day. 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. The whole slot, or the stone waits.

No maintenance visit is built into the job. Soap, water, and on the porous stones a seal. Marble is the one people underestimate. It is porous, like granite, and wants sealing. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Post-war terraces have a short straight hall to the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than the houses they replaced. The fitting itself is about squaring up to walls that look modern and are not: block or breeze walls with a skim that has been patched over decades, so we still dry-lay and scribe rather than trust the template edge. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted.

Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. A join sits over a cabinet gable. It never spans a gap and never runs through a cut-out. A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A U puts the sink in one leg, the hob in another and any drainer grooves in whatever is left, which spreads the cut-outs about but does not reduce the machining time. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down.

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. Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. The two returns in a U are close to the same size and it is tempting to nest them side by side, except that the veining then mirrors across the room and reads as deliberate for the wrong reason. Support goes in before stone does, so whatever steel, plywood or extra noggin the shape calls for is fitted while the room is still empty. The step between rooms is packed out first.

Thickness has to be known before quoting, since it decides the edge, the cut-outs and what the units carry. Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. 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. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer.