Worktop installation in Fullwell Cross

Yes. Fullwell Cross is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are IG6. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Redbridge. A free-parking street with cars both sides can still leave the van forty metres away, and that distance is carry, not driving. 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 day is built around that window. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The external wall is a concrete panel with a modest window, so the run under it sits in a shallow reveal with a hard cill. Deck access or a single narrow staircase with tight half-landings means long pieces get walked up on edge, and the landing turn is checked before we commit. A structure this old is worked with, not corrected. Where the boxing stands proud of the finished wall the upstand behind it has to be broken into separate lengths, because one piece cannot pass it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

There is no leaning a piece against a wall halfway up, so any flight longer than a dozen treads is planned around a rest point on a landing. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. We would sooner lift a gate off its hinges than force a piece past it. Where the van can pull up level with the gate the pieces are handled the fewest times, which is what actually protects them. 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 ask than guess.

One of the three we are asked for most, although worktop replacement is asked for more. Same template visit, same workshop, same installers either way. A worktop replacement between tenancies is a single-day job by design, because the flat is not earning while it is empty. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Lease hours decide when the noisy part happens. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. One visit, with the sink and hob seated and sealed before we leave. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract.

A doorway partway along one wall breaks that side into two separate pieces, and two short pieces cost more between them than the single long one they replace. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. Access is checked against the longest piece first. Expect £110 to £550 per square metre for material supply only, with templating, fabrication and fitting on their own lines.

A boxed soil stack or service riser in the corner of a run eats into the worktop depth and has to be scribed around rather than cut square. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. The last hundred millimetres decide how it reads. Reserve a space as close to the block entrance as possible and clear the landing and stairs of prams, bikes and stored items. Some doors in a building need a consent letter and some need nothing at all, so the first question is which arrangement applies here rather than which one is usual. A half-day of access is not a fitting day, and it is better to say so at booking than to find out at eleven. One visit where permission only stretches to one.

The check comes before the measuring rather than after, because the whole drawing is set out from that plane. Units have to be fitted, fixed and level before templating, and it is better to hear that at the template than on the fitting day. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. Boxing is rarely the same depth at worktop height as it is at floor level, so measuring it low down is the usual reason a top will not sit back. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw.

If your own slab breaks there is no matching replacement to hand, and that is the real difference. Supply through us runs £110 to £550 per square metre for the slab alone, which is the line you would be removing. Stone cut to somebody else’s drawing cannot usefully be re-cut to yours. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Fitting is booked as a run of consecutive days rather than as separate visits, which is what makes several kitchens in one building workable. That family has lived on a building site long enough.

Most breakages happen on the carry, which is why the route is walked and measured before anything comes off the van. The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. The rest of the kitchen still goes in. One damaged piece does not hold up the pieces either side. Pendant fittings over the stairwell and anything hung on the half-landing come down first, because a piece on edge sweeps a wider arc than the people carrying it. We walk the route with a tape and protect it end to end before the first piece is lifted. That is what the morning is planned around.

The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. An old stone top is heavier coming out than the new one is going in, and leaves in sections. Unrestricted does not mean empty, and a street that is clear at seven is usually full by nine. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The kerb decides the start time.