Worktop installation in Gunnersbury

Yes. Gunnersbury is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are W4, TW8. It is worked on our west London run, along with the rest of Hounslow. Building management is often the real gate rather than the bay itself, since the barrier, the shutter and the lift each need someone with a fob. 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 kerb decides the start time. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Floors are concrete with a screed and a thin finish, so there is no give anywhere and packing the carcasses is the only way to get a plane. This is the most managed day we do. Fixings go into what the wall actually is. 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. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The awkward corner goes in first, not last.

Piece length is set by the internal diagonal of the lift car, not by the length of the slab. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. A piece is stood on end only where there is room to turn it. Time-limited bays are camera-enforced across a lot of managed estates, so the unload runs to the clock and the van moves off afterwards. 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. Van to door is the distance that matters.

It sits second or third on this patch, behind worktop replacement. Same template visit, same benches, same installers either way. Agents book this work at short notice, because the void only becomes a real date once the outgoing tenant confirms they are going. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. A tenant moves in on the date on the contract. A managed portfolio tends to repeat one specification across every flat, which keeps later repairs and replacements simple to order. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. That family has lived on a building site long enough.

Butt-jointing over the gable puts the seam a few hundred millimetres back from the corner, below the eye line instead of straight across it. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. Steel under the overhang before stone goes near it. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

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. Rushing that is what leaves a gap you look at every morning for fifteen years. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. Have the works booking confirmed with the managing agent or porter in advance, with the lift slot and any parking permit or bay suspension in place. One owner can take a date next week while the flat below needs three weeks of notice, so several kitchens in one building end up scheduled by the slowest permission. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. The whole slot, or the stone waits.

The tap and waste have to be disconnected by a plumber before we start and reconnected once the stone is in. 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. Carcasses stay. Surface changes. That is the whole of it. A dedicated loading bay or service yard is the easiest arrangement in a managed building, provided the slot is booked and someone has the key to the shutter. We aim for the first slot of the day where parking is tight, because that is when the street is emptiest. Where the van stands sets how the day runs.

Grooves are machined into the surface rather than applied to it, so there is nothing to come loose later. A groove set is its own item on the quote rather than something rolled in with the sink cut-out. Thick external walls, deep window reveals and boxed risers mean the runs are templated to what is there rather than to a rectangle. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The route is walked before the first lift.

Nothing is payable until the template, and the template measures the room as it stands rather than estimating from a plan. Two kitchens the same length can be far apart, because material, edge and cut-outs move independently of size. The edge profile is its own line, so a shaped edge and a square one are two different figures. A chimney breast left in place splits a wall into two alcoves, and the two are rarely the same width and rarely parallel to each other. It adds an hour or two to the day, and that time sits in the schedule rather than being taken out of the finishing. A bonded mitre goes down on one plane or not at all.

Undermount bowls are cut and polished in the workshop and dry-fitted to the stone on the bench before anything is loaded. If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. Where the hob lands is set out against the units and the wall behind, not off the kitchen plan. Corner sinks and corner hobs sit exactly where the joint wants to be, so on an L the cut-out positions get settled before the join positions do. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. A corner that will not close is never forced.