Worktop installation in Gidea Park

Yes. Gidea Park is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM2. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. A drive behind an electric gate depends on somebody being in to open it and on the gate staying open while the load comes off. 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. A booked bay only helps if it is empty when we arrive. You never have to visit anything or collect anything: we template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen.

The room is wide enough that an island turns up in nearly every scheme, and how far the drainage can be taken is what fixes where it sits. 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. The slow parts are slow for a reason. The stone carries the scribe because the wall cannot be persuaded, so back edges are cut oversize and eased in rather than dropped straight down. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. Packers go under the carcass, never under the stone.

The van gets close to the door and the stone comes off the tail lift onto a trolley, which is about the shortest carry we ever get. 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. Some drives are wide enough for the van and too short for the tail lift, because the tail lift needs its own clear metre behind the vehicle. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. The clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not.

Not especially, and pretending otherwise would be simple enough. What the research on this patch actually lists is worktop fabrication. It is a fact about the local housing rather than about the work. The job is quoted, cut and fitted the same way wherever on the patch it lands. Extension work runs late far more often than it runs early, and the worktop is close to the last thing in, so the date agreed at the start is rarely the date that happens. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Book us when the units exist, not when they are ordered. 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. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Handover day is a hard stop.

The offcut taken out of the middle for a hob is a large usable piece, and it is worth deciding early whether it becomes an upstand or goes in the skip. 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.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Someone who expects to still be there in ten years asks different questions: how a honed finish marks, what a sealer does and does not do, and whether a chip by the sink can be repaired in place. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. One person is responsible for the door that morning.

On the fitting day floors and door frames are protected, joins clamped flush, sink and hob sealed. Upstands and splashbacks are templated after the worktop is down and settled, so they are a separate visit. The template is taken in your kitchen after the units are in and fixed, never before. The window over the sink sits at about worktop height, so the run is set out around the sill and the reveal rather than under them. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Dust extraction indoors, or the cut happens outside.

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. Level is checked at the template, which is the point of measuring in the room rather than off a drawing. 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. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. A scribe is a cut. It is not an adjustment.

If you want the old top kept for a garage or a utility, say so and it stays on site. The sink and hob are lifted out with the old top and kept aside if you are reusing them. 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. Where the drive falls away from the house the trolley wants to run, and where it climbs the same load has to be pushed the whole way up. Two men and a long carry is a different day from two men and a drive, and the crew is sized on that. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

The joint between splashback and worktop is siliconed, never grouted, so it can move a little without cracking. An upstand covers the gap where the worktop meets a wall that is not flat, which is its real job. Tiling and stone can meet, but where they meet is decided before the template rather than after. The boiler has usually been moved out to the garage or the utility, leaving a capped flue and a run of dead pipework in the kitchen wall. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. The house sets the order of work.