Worktop installation in Forest Hill

Yes. Forest Hill is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are SE23. It is worked on our south east London run, along with the rest of Lewisham. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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. It is why the arrival time is what it is. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

Original walls are thick, lime-plastered and rarely straight, which makes dry-laying and scribing the bulk of the fitting day. 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. Settlement is packed out, never levered out. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Nothing bears on plasterboard.

Door width, hall width and the diagonal at the turn are three separate measurements, and it is the diagonal that catches people out. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. Banisters and door frames are padded before anything moves. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. 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. The day is built around that window.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop fabrication. A kitchen carved out of a larger room sits under whatever the original plan left behind, so the run frequently ends at a blocked doorway or a boxed-in service. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Access is agreed with whoever is still living there. Conversions put kitchens where the services could be made to reach rather than where they belong, so runs are short and interrupted. 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.

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. The step between rooms is packed out first. Supply-only material is £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are quoted separately rather than rolled in.

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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The awkward corner goes in first, not last. 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. An owner paying for this directly tends to want the reasoning as much as the number, so a quote that explains why a join sits where it does is worth more than a cheaper one that does not. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Emptying the room belongs to the keyholder, not the crew.

Taking the old tops away is a line rather than an assumption, so it comes off if you do not want it. No installed price per square metre is published, because it is not a real number. Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Two alcove pieces will not swap over however similar they look, so they are marked left and right at the bench and stay that way to the van. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing.

Each cut-out is priced on its own line, so a range, a bowl and a half, a boiling tap and a drainer are four items rather than one. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. 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. Nothing is cut on site if the bench can do it.

They are cut with a fall towards the bowl, which is why they cannot be added on site later. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. Old flues run inside the wall behind the run, so a deep fixing finds a void about as often as it finds brick. Almost everything that makes a fitting day hard is a property of the building rather than of the stone. Nothing is cut in the room if the shop could do it.

How much slab you hold matters: upstands and any remake have to come out of the same batch. How the slab has been stored is worth telling us, because stone kept flat is not stone off a rack. In a converted house the flat entrance and the internal doorway are usually tighter than the communal stairs, and that is easy to overlook. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day.