Worktop installation in De Beauvoir Town

Yes. De Beauvoir Town is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are N1. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. A controlled parking zone means either a visitor permit sorted in advance or a suspended bay, and a suspension is applied for days ahead rather than on the morning. 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 carry length sets the number of hands on the job. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

A basement is often reached by its own door under the front steps, and that door is smaller than anything else on the route. The day is planned backwards from the hall. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. 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.

A tiled hall floor takes a dropped corner badly, so boards go down over the tiles before anything comes through the door. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Every piece is staged to it before fitting starts. Permit hours are what matters, not the permit itself, because a bay that frees up at six in the evening is no use for a template at ten. 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. Moving the van mid-fit costs an hour nobody budgeted.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. That family has lived on a building site long enough. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there.

Two runs meeting at an internal corner is the most common shape we fit, and the corner is where the decisions are. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The laying order follows the shape. The material band is £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. 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. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. 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. Notice periods decide the date more often than the workshop.

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. If the carcasses are corrected, the template is taken again, since a drawing off units that then moved is worthless. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. Plumbing, gas and electrical work are not in the figure, because we do not do them. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. 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. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

Sinks, taps and hobs are yours to buy in any case, and they only have to be in the room for the template. The workmanship guarantee is the same either way. It does not extend to a material we did not supply. Studio and one-bed conversions put the whole kitchen against a single wall, so the job is one run and everything depends on that one length. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one.

We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. The return piece is the awkward one on a slab: short, full depth, and rarely nesting neatly against the long lengths, so yield rather than area is what moves the material figure. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Scribed one piece at a time.