Worktop installation in Denmark Hill

Yes. Denmark Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE5. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Southwark. Overhanging branches clear the roof of a car and catch the roof of a van, so the drive is looked at from the driver seat rather than from the doorstep. 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. Camera enforcement does not take an explanation. There is nothing to drive to and nothing to pick up, because both visits are to the property itself.

The kitchen is a rear service room with a scullery and a larder off it, and both have usually survived as separate spaces. Access through the property is usually the simplest of any archetype, with wide doors and generous rooms, so we can often carry a full-length piece straight in without a planned join. Walked, measured, protected, then lifted. Where a breast interrupts a long wall the join can often go there, so it reads as a natural break rather than a line in the middle of a worktop. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

A communal flight is out of use while a piece is on it, so the carry is timed so nobody is trying to pass on a half-landing. 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. On a drive that only takes one vehicle nose-in, the van has to reverse the whole length of it to get back out, which decides which way it goes in. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. Where a family has been living around a building site for months, the finish date carries more weight than any other part of the specification. 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.

Island units are rarely fixed to anything at first fix, so they get screwed to the floor and levelled against the perimeter run before the stone is measured at all. 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. Reckon on £110 to £550 per square metre for the material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting itemised separately.

The returns into a breast recess are the tightest scribes in the room, and they are eased in rather than forced. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Nothing bears on plasterboard. 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. The decision usually gets made standing in the room rather than at a desk, which is why a slab is worth viewing whole instead of choosing from a sample card. 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.

Delivery to the workshop has to be arranged and dated, since nothing is nested until it is there. Say what you have and where it came from before anything is booked, because thickness and batch decide what can be done with it. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. 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. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. The last trade in inherits every delay before it.

The carry route is measured before anything is cut, so a piece that will not make the turn is split at the drawing stage rather than discovered on the day. Every piece goes in by hand and stone does not bend, so the tightest turn on the route sets the longest piece. A fitted stair carpet is either lifted or covered, because grit trodden into it under work boots does more harm than the carry itself. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. 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. 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.

An upstand is a slim strip that follows the worktop up the wall; a full-height splashback runs from the worktop to the underside of the wall units. Stone up a wall is heavier than tile and bonded rather than hung, so the wall has to be sound. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Windows are low and wide with deep timber cills and leaded lights, so a run under one meets joinery rather than plaster. 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. The slow parts are slow for a reason.