Worktop installation in Hacton

Yes. Hacton is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are RM12. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Havering. Deep gravel takes the wheels of a loaded trolley and holds them, so either boards go down or the pieces are carried. 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. The template happens in your kitchen and so does the fit, so there is nothing to visit and nothing to collect.

The roof space above carries services, so a boiler flue or a soil vent can drop into a corner of the kitchen and stay exactly there. 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 building moved decades ago and the fit allows for it. 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. 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.

A short hard approach with no steps means a full-length piece can be walked in flat by two people rather than turned up on edge. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. That is what the morning is planned around. Block paving bedded on sand can rut under a fully loaded van, and that is said to the customer beforehand rather than explained 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. Slack in the day gets spent on the street or on the fit.

Yes. On the research for this patch it is the first of the three jobs listed, ahead of worktop replacement. A converted flat is measured off the original house, so no two units in the same building have quite the same kitchen run. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Back-to-back slots need every flat ready on the first day. Kitchens go in near the end of a conversion, behind the plastering and the flooring, by which point the programme has already absorbed whatever slipped earlier. Where the window is fixed there is no second day to fall back on, so the prep list matters more than usual. Booked around the turnaround, not our diary.

The advantage of a U is that every join can be put over a gable in a corner, so nothing lands in the middle of a clear length. On the day that means dry-laying the whole layout first and only then pulling and bonding the joins. The last piece in has the least tolerance left. Supply only, material is £110 to £550 per square metre, with templating, fabrication and fitting quoted on their own lines.

Alcove pieces get cut oversize on both scribe edges, with the true wall angles carried on the template drawing rather than assumed. The back edge is eased in progressively rather than offered up once and forced. Fixings find the studs or they find nothing. 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. The signature at the end belongs to somebody with authority.

The fitting itself is one visit: a plain run is a morning, an island with splashbacks takes most of the day. Nothing is measured until the sink, the tap and the hob are in the room to measure against. A template on a normal kitchen takes two to three hours in the room. A serving hatch through to the dining room is common, and closing one up leaves a panel of newer wall exactly where the run passes. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. The room is swept and the offcuts leave with us.

Splitting a run costs a join, and that is the price of getting stone into the room at all. A join forced by the route still sits over a gable, so it is no poorer a join for that. The alternative to a join is a shorter run, which is usually the wrong thing to trade away. Where the van stands level with the front of the house a piece gets handled twice instead of five times, and stone breaks on handling rather than on the road. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. It gets checked before the first piece is lifted.

There are only ever a few legal positions, and the one taken is furthest from the light. What you get is a line rather than a step, because the pieces are levelled to each other first. Each join is an item on the drawing, so the layout and the figure move together. The short run at the head of a U usually sits under a window, so that piece is scribed on three sides at once and has nowhere left to be pushed back to. 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.

A tap under a window board still needs room for its handle to lift, which is checked at the template. A sit-on sink and an undermounted one are different cut-outs, so which it is gets settled before the template. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A U puts the sink in one leg, the hob in another and any drainer grooves in whatever is left, which spreads the cut-outs about but does not reduce the machining time. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Dry-lay first, always.