Worktop installation in Eastbrookend

Yes. Eastbrookend 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 gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. 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. Forty metres of carry changes the shape of the whole day. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

An infill house is built to modern standards on an old plot, so the room is square even though the site around it is not. Everything comes up in the lift, so we measure the lift car's internal diagonal before the piece is loaded, because a car that takes 2.4m on the diagonal will not take a 3m worktop no matter how you stand it. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for. Where a partition has been built off the floor screed rather than off the slab, it moves, and a mitre bonded across that corner is the first thing to open. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The gap closes on the grinder, not in the sealant gun.

Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Protection comes up only when the last piece is inside. 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. 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. We would rather start at seven than argue with a warden.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The last trade in inherits every delay before it.

An aisle under a metre stops being a working space the moment two people are in it, and the depth of the tops either side is what decides whether that happens. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The last piece in has the least tolerance left. Material alone is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are never folded into that figure.

An unsupported overhang off a stud wall wants noggins fixed between the studs before the boarding goes on, and once it is boarded and skimmed that option has gone. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Level is checked across the room, not along one wall. Book the service lift and loading bay with the building manager for the whole fitting window, and have the fob or key for lift override ready. 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. The managing agent books the lift, not the household.

A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. No money changes hands before the template. Riser panels, wall boxes and the boiler cupboard sit in fixed positions the developer will not move for a worktop. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The first hour is protection and packing, not stone.

Machining is permanent. If a later kitchen moves the sink, the grooves stay where they were cut. Which side of the bowl they go is about how you stand at the sink, and it is settled before cutting. Grooves and an undermounted bowl are usually specified together, since the grooves are run to the bowl edge. The room is square, the walls are plumb and the floor is flat, so almost every complication in the job belongs to the building rather than the kitchen. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Every unit gets a level on it before a piece lands.

A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. Even an easy kerbside carry wants the pavement clear at the tail lift, because a three-metre piece on edge has a swing radius nobody expects until it is swinging. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after.

The bead where the sink and hob meet the stone is siliconed rather than sealed, and wants watching. Granite is porous to varying degrees, so it is sealed when we fit it and topped up over the life of the worktop. Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Access is a question about the plot rather than the house: a narrow frontage between older buildings with nowhere obvious to stand a van. If the diagonal is short we either split the run with a planned join or, on lower floors, carry up the stairwell, which needs the half-landing turn checking as well. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.