Worktop installation in Figges Marsh

Yes. Figges Marsh is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are CR4. It is worked on our south west London run, along with the rest of Merton. A single red line has hours and a double red line does not, and the difference decides whether an early start is a plan or a penalty. 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. Everything that involves you happens in your kitchen, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The stair from the street is narrow with a tight turn at the top, which caps piece length well below anything the run itself needs. Access is generally through the front door and a short straight hall into the kitchen, which is a good deal kinder than a Victorian terrace, though rear access through a back garden or shared path is often the better route if it exists. Lath and plaster is not a fixing, and is treated accordingly. A room can be out of square in both directions at once, so the wall that leans is also the wall that runs downhill, and one scribe cannot answer both. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The alcove piece is dry-laid before the run is.

The measurement that decides everything is the diagonal between the underside of the flight above and the outer edge of the turn below it. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The way in is agreed before the crew is booked, not after. Where a marked loading box sits on the red route the stop is legal but timed, so the unload runs as one movement with every hand on it. 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.

Not really, and there is no sense dressing it up. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop replacement, worktop splashbacks & upstands and worktop fabrication. That is a statement about the local housing rather than about the work. It gets quoted, cut and fitted exactly as it would anywhere else on the patch. Party-wall and lease conditions in a converted building set when noisy work can happen, which shapes the fitting day more than the kitchen does. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. Several units in one building are fitted out to the same drawing, so an error on that drawing is an error repeated in every flat. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. A missing sink stops eight kitchens, not one.

The catch with a galley is that both runs are seen end-on from the doorway, so any difference in overhang between the two reads immediately. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Access is checked against the longest piece first. Material is £110-£550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted on their own lines.

Plaster thickness varies over the height of a wall, so the line at worktop height is not the line at skirting level, and the units decide which one matters. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone. Unlock any rear or shared path gate and clear both the hall and the back approach so we can choose the better route on the day. Whoever manages the block controls the lift booking, the bin store and the visitor parking, and none of that sits in the gift of the household whose kitchen it is. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Communal floors are protected the same as private ones.

Disposal means it goes in the van, not into the garden to wait for a collection. What comes out goes by the same route the new stone comes in by, which is why that route is walked before anything is lifted. The carcasses stay. Only the surface changes. A bus lane along the frontage brings its own hours with it, and stopping in one is enforced the same way the red route is. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Everything comes indoors before the loading window closes.

No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Ask for the lines rather than the total. One number for a kitchen tells you nothing you can check. Two walls each a degree out give an internal corner two degrees out, and the whole of that error lands in the mitre. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. If the units run late the template moves, not the fit: the gap between them is fabrication. The template produces a drawing, and the workshop cuts to that drawing once you agree it. A boiler hangs on the wall above the run in most of these, and its pipework drops exactly where a splashback wants to go. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The room is swept and the offcuts leave with us.

A join cannot cross a cut-out, so a sink mid-run takes away the position you would have used. A finished join is typically two to three millimetres, colour-matched and sanded flush. Join count is a question about slab size and run length, nothing else. Galley runs are usually short enough to come out of a single slab, so the material band you choose does more to the total than the room shape does. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Dry-lay first, always.