Worktop installation in Greenford Green

Yes. Greenford Green is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are UB6. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Ealing. Where a car has to come off the drive first, it is worth knowing whose car it is and whether the keys are in the house on the morning. 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 clock on the bay runs whether the lift is free or not. Both visits happen in your kitchen, the template and the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The under-stair cupboard opens off the kitchen in most of them, and its door swing is the reason a corner run stops where it does. The carry is the easy part; the plaster around the old breast and the packing over a moved floor are not. Nothing is screwed into plasterboard and hoped for. Anything that has to stay accessible, a stopcock, a gas meter, a riser panel, is marked on the template so the stone is cut around it instead of over it. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. If it will not drop in, it goes back out to the saw.

Suction lifters need a clean dry face to hold, so in the wet the pads come off and the piece goes back to being carried on webbing by hand. 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. A gate post set narrower than the opening looks generous from the road and stops a wide piece a metre in. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

Yes, one of the three we see most, with worktop replacement ahead of it. Same visit to template, same workshop, same installers on the day. A new extension slab is not automatically level, and that wants checking before templating rather than after the stone is cut. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. The junction between the original room and the extension is the point to watch, because the two floors rarely sit at the same height. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. The annexe and the main kitchen go in together.

A dishwasher door on one side and an oven door on the other cannot both stand open in a narrow aisle, so which appliance goes where matters more in this shape than in any other. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Dry-lay first, always. Material runs £110 to £550 per square metre supply only, and templating, fabrication and fitting each get their own line.

A notch around a boxed stack is machined with a radius at the internal corner, because a square inside corner there is exactly where a top will crack. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Dry-lay, mark, cut, then bond. Unlock and clear the side gate and back door, and move bins, planters and washing lines out of the alley run. Where someone is living in the house through the work, the strip-out and the fit are planned so the kitchen is out of use for a day and not a week. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The signature at the end belongs to somebody with authority.

A sloping floor is not the problem. The plane the unit tops finish in is. Where a run meets an appliance, level decides whether that appliance door still clears the stone above it. Levelling belongs in the carcasses, on their own legs and packers. A live soil stack cannot be chased back into the wall, so the depth it steals is permanent and the run is planned around it rather than through it. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. Eased in, never forced.

Bleach and limescale remover harm a polished finish rather than clean it, whichever material is on the units. Granite tells you when the seal wants topping up: water stops beading on the surface and starts darkening it instead. Upkeep is settled when the slab is chosen, since it belongs to the material rather than the fabrication. The chimney breast served a back boiler and is usually still standing, so there is a shallow recess on one side of the room. A run crossing from the original room into the extension is packed to one plane before the stone is offered up. Where the wall bellies, the top is eased in against it.

What decides it is not the width of the stairwell but the length of piece that can be turned in it. A piece travels on edge, never flat, because on edge is how stone of that length carries its own weight. Doorways, the newel post and the handrail usually take the room away, rather than the stairs themselves. A loading bay or a red route puts a clock on the unload, so the pieces come off in the order they will be fitted rather than the order they were loaded. 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.

A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A remake goes back through the same cutting and polishing, so it is a return visit rather than a patch. 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. It sets the crew: two fitters where the route is straightforward, four where it is not. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.