Worktop installation in Crystal Palace

Yes. Crystal Palace is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE19, SE20. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Bromley. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. 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. An early slot is the cheapest parking arrangement there is. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A large villa has wide doors, a generous hall and somewhere to park, so the joins that go in are chosen for layout rather than forced by the route. What costs time is the distance from where the van can park to the door, often down a long drive or across gravel, so we plan the carry with enough hands and board the route where it crosses gravel or lawn. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

Spindles and a newel cap stand proud of the string, so the usable width on a turn is measured to the handrail rather than to the wall behind it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside. The van is not staying on a main road for the day, so once the stone is off it goes and parks properly somewhere else. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. A crew waiting for a space is a crew being paid to wait.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement and worktop splashbacks & upstands. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. That family has lived on a building site long enough.

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. 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. Material sits between £110 and £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted line by line.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is. Give us the hardest, shortest approach to the door you can, clear of parked cars, and warn us of any soft ground, steps or gravel on the route. Owner-occupied kitchens are usually being done once, which is why the edge profile, the vein direction and where a join falls are worth the conversation. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it.

The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. 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. Walls that are old, thick and rarely straight make dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the day. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Two lifts and a turn make it a four-man piece.

What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. A red route means no stopping, and no stopping means exactly that, so the stone comes in from a side street or from a bay behind the property. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. The carry length sets the number of hands on the job.

Grooves are machined in the workshop at the same time as the bowl cut-out, because they cannot be done well in a kitchen. Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. These are the multi-piece jobs, where vein direction across a join matters as much as the join itself. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Suction pads will not hold on a wet or dusty face.

What decides between them is usually the wall: what it is built of, how flat it is, and where the sockets ended up. Ordered later from a different batch, the match is not reliable where the two pieces meet. These kitchens are big rooms with long perimeter runs and an island, so level has to hold across the whole floor rather than along one wall. Getting in is straightforward, so the day is spent dry-laying and scribing to walls that have never been straight. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor.