Worktop installation in Downham

Yes. Downham is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are BR1, SE6. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. Access is usually the easy part here, as most of these have a side gate and a back door straight into the kitchen, so we carry down the side alley rather than through the house and keep the mess outside. Soft brick takes a different plug to blockwork. An alcove is commonly wider at the back than at the front, so a piece cut to the opening drops in and then stands off the rear wall. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Two millimetres at the wall is two millimetres you see.

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. Nobody sets a worktop down mid-flight to change grip. 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. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A shared house stays occupied while we work in it. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. 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.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Scribed one piece at a time. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

The face of a breast is rarely flat, and a top returning onto it picks up that bow across the last few hundred millimetres of its length. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Nothing bears on plasterboard. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. 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. A void between tenancies has no spare days in it.

Packing takes up small variation. It is not there to hide something that belongs in the units. Small variation is taken up by packing under the top on the fitting day. Stone does not flex, so a run that rocks on its carcasses rocks just as badly once it is stone. Old breasts carry a bulge low down where the original opening was closed up, and the units stand off it before the stone is measured at all. 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 awkward corner goes in first, not last.

Chips at an edge or a corner are the usual form, because that is where stone is least supported. Stone cannot be filled and made good the way laminate can, so a damaged piece is remade rather than patched. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside.

Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. Day to day all three want soap and water; abrasive creams and scouring pads are what dull a polished surface. Topping a seal up is a wipe-on job with a cloth. The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. The fitting itself is slower than the carry: original plaster on the party wall and around the old chimney breast is rarely square to the run, so back scribes get cut on site, and where a return wraps into a breast recess we template that shoulder tight and ease it in. A floor that falls twenty millimetres is packed out first.

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. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. One datum for every run in the room.