Worktop installation in Haggerston

Yes. Haggerston is on the patch, and the postcodes we work here are E2, E8. It is worked on our east London run, along with the rest of Hackney. With no scheme to work with there is nothing to book and nobody to ring, so the only levers left are an early arrival and a word with the neighbours. 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. We would rather ask than guess. The work comes to you. We template in your kitchen and fit in your kitchen, with nothing to visit or collect.

Lease conditions and the other flats in the building decide when noisy work can happen, so the fitting day has a start and a finish that are not ours to set. We measure the front door, the hall width and the turn into the kitchen before anything comes off the van, because a 3m piece has to swing through that corner on edge and stone does not bend to help you. The shell has the last word on fitting day. A scribe has a working limit, and past twenty millimetres or so the back edge starts eating depth the run cannot spare. On the day it means dry-laying, marking, and cutting the scribe on site before anything is bonded. The overhang is checked again once the feet are set.

A rated load sounds ample until three lengths of granite and two fitters are standing on it, so the stone goes up one piece at a time. The fitting day is planned backwards from that point, before anything comes off the van. The opening is measured on the diagonal, not across the frame. Unrestricted kerbside is straightforward as long as the space in front of the property is actually clear when the van arrives. 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. The kerb decides the start time.

Often enough. It is one of the three, behind worktop replacement. The template, the workshop and the installers are the same either way. An open-plan extension puts the worktop in the middle of the living space, so it is looked at from the sofa as well as worked on. The fitting day is scheduled to suit that rather than to suit the diary. Handover day is a hard stop. Extension budgets are usually well spent by the time the worktop is ordered, which is where the choice between quartz and a thinner sintered stone actually gets made. 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.

The joint where a peninsula meets the main run wants a gable directly under it, and where the units do not offer one, steel goes in to carry that joint instead. A layout that has been packed and levelled run by run instead of to one datum shows as a step where two pieces meet. The return is offered up last. The supply-only figure for material runs £110 to £550 per square metre, and templating, fabrication and fitting are lines of their own.

Walls that bow along their length are the normal condition rather than the exception, and a straight-cut back edge will show a shadow gap at one end and touch at the other. 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. Clear the full hall and stairs route of furniture, bikes, coats and stair-gates, and keep the front door propped and unobstructed for the carry. Residents are given written notice before anyone attends, and that notice period rather than the workshop is what governs the earliest sensible start. The fitting day is arranged with whoever can actually give us access for the whole slot. Booked around the tenant, not around the owner.

Where there is no room for a separate drainer, grooves are usually what gets specified instead. On a porous stone the grooved area is sealed with the rest, and it gets wet more than anything else. The grooves sit inside the depth of the top with stone left either side, so a shallow run limits them. There is usually a step down into the back addition, so the kitchen floor and the hall floor are not the same level and neither of them is flat. The fitting day is planned backwards from all of it, before the first piece comes off the van. Access, floor and wall in that order, then stone.

A full-height piece behind the hob has to allow for the extractor, so that gets settled first. Upstand or splashback, the stone is cut from the same slab run as the worktop, at the same time, so the batch actually matches. Kitchens in these flats are frequently in what was a bedroom or a return room, so the window is tall and its sill sits close to worktop height. Scribing takes longer than the carry does, so the quiet half of the day is the half that runs over. Old fabric gets handled as old fabric.

The workmanship guarantee runs 5 years on every kitchen we fit. Floors and units are protected before anything comes through the door. A dropped pan years later is a different question, and stone is remade rather than filled either way. Blankets on the walls and a board on the floor go in before the first piece, because a scratched car becomes a bill from the managing agent long after the kitchen is finished. Finding it out on the morning costs the whole slot, because there is no second route to fall back on. Pieces wait on trestles until the fitters call for them.

If the sink or hob changes after the template, the drawing changes first and nothing is cut meanwhile. A Belfast or butler sink has to be installed and at its final height before the template, because the stone is cut to sit on it. Nothing is cut out in the kitchen. Cutting a bowl on site is how worktops get cracked. A breakfast bar on the outer side is an overhang like any other, and the support under it is sized for people leaning on the end rather than for the weight of the stone alone. Joins are pulled with suction clamps and finished flush, then colour-matched, which is the last thing done rather than the first. Mitres are pulled together, never pushed.