Worktop installation in Dagenham Village

Yes. Dagenham Village is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM10. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Barking and Dagenham. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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 first hand off the van is the one holding the clock. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

These were built with generous room sizes for their date, so a peninsula fits where a speculative house of the same age would not take one. The carry is the constraint. One datum, taken off the highest point of the floor. A low sill over the sink run is what decides between an upstand and stone dying into a window board, and there is often less clearance than an upstand is tall. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Carcasses get packed level before anything is offered up.

A level threshold with hard standing outside it is the one arrangement where a full run goes in without a single re-grip. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. It is why the arrival time is what it is.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. Extension kitchens are usually specified long before they are buildable, so the run lengths on the drawing and the run lengths in the room are different numbers. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer.

Older houses put the boiler or the meter on one of the two walls, and whatever is boxed in around it sets the point where that run has to stop. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. A galley is levelled as one plane, both sides together. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

Window boards and cills stand proud of the plaster, so the back edge of the top has to be plotted to where the units actually sit rather than to the wall. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A forced back edge cracks weeks later. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. One staircase can serve an owner on the first floor and a managed tenancy on the second, so the access arrangement changes at every landing while the building stays the same. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Notice periods decide the date more often than the workshop.

Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where a run finishes into a reveal, the depth of that reveal is taken at worktop height and nowhere else. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Mark it, lift it, cut it, offer it up again.

Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. A minority of these are non-traditional precast types, and in those the inside face of the outer wall is a panel between columns rather than a masonry wall. The stairwell half-landing is usually the tightest point on the whole route and it dictates the maximum piece. Settlement is packed out, never levered out.

The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Sill height gets settled with the template on site, because it is one of the few dimensions nobody has measured before we arrive. The piece is offered up, marked, taken back out and cut, and that cycle can run twice before anything is bonded down. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. The two runs are read against each other rather than against the floor, so they are set to one datum taken across the aisle instead of measured up from the boards. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The last piece in has the least tolerance left.