Worktop installation in Eastcote

Yes. Eastcote is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are HA5, HA4. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hillingdon. The distance from the standing to the actual kitchen door is the number that counts, since plenty of drives finish at a side gate and a garden path. 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. We come to the kitchen to template and again to fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The roof space above carries services, so a boiler flue or a soil vent can drop into a corner of the kitchen and stay exactly there. 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. Encased steel is always bigger than the steel inside it, so the casing is what gets plotted, and a casing is rarely square to the wall it sits against. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

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. 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. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. 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 fabrication. 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. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Fire doors stay shut, so the carry route is longer. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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.

Seating overhangs past roughly 300mm will not carry on the carcass alone, so flat steel bar or a plywood substrate has to be built into the units first. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Waterfall legs are set before the top is bonded down. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

A brick pier standing into the run divides it in two, and the join goes against the pier where a clear wall would have needed no join at all. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. 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. Scheme rules on working hours are checked first.

An island is where this usually shows, standing free with no wall to level against. 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. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Where the structure cannot be cut into, the stone is relieved instead, and a relief that deep changes both the yield off the slab and how the piece is handled. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

Every run, cut-out, edge, join and groove set is a line, which is what makes it comparable with anyone else’s. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. An intruding steel column, a brick pier or a downstand breaks a run that would otherwise have been one clean piece. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

A boiling tap needs a hole of its own and a cupboard below for the tank, so the units change too. Two bowls means two cut-outs and a bridge of stone between them, which decides where the sink can go. We seat and seal the sink and hob on the day; water, waste, gas and electrics are for your plumber and electrician. An island carries its own edge detail all the way round, so a mitred 100mm apron on four sides is four mitres cut, bonded and polished before the piece ever leaves the bench. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. The step between rooms is packed out first.

A full-height piece shows a wall that is out more than an upstand does, over the extra height. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. 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. Everything on one level means no stairs, no landings and no turns, which is about the easiest carry there is in domestic work. 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.